Director Danny Boyle pulls off a mystifying drama that puzzles and engrosses to the very end. It’s called Trance and the stealthy crime drama presses all the right buttons for an intriguing evening at home. Now on Blu-ray the film features a fine cast lead by James McAvoy and Rosario Dawson, has some nicely produced special features and delivers high quality entertainment.
The plot centers on the art industry were auctioneer Simon (James McAvoy) sells only the most valuable paintings in the world. Sales are held in the safest building in London and if there is an attempt at a robbery, a fail safe system has been set up. During an auction lead by Simon of a famous painting by Francisco Goya called “Witches Flight” a robbery takes place and chaos becomes rampant. The thieves who have smuggled in weapons attack the stage, but in the nick of time Simon takes the painting to a room and prepares it for safety. On his way to the storage bin, he gets slammed with the butt of a gun and passes out. The thieves take off with the case that should contain the valuable art. When the thieves discover that they only have an empty frame, they try to track down Simon.
The movie gets really tense as we discover that Simon has no memory of the incident and the loss has been attributed to the bump he received during the theft. Director Danny Boyle sets his audience up with a very swift exciting robbery and then takes the viewer into the realm of hypnosis creating a motion picture filled with deception, denial, domination, trickery, death and mistrust that will challenge your mind till the very end. Boyle openly lets you know who the perpetrators are, their motive and the plan to recover the multimillion dollar art that has temporarily slipped away from them. What he doesn’t do however, is solve the puzzle he has created until he’s ready.
The fine acting makes the film work with McAvoy keeping his character in a trance while Rosario Dawson as hypnotist Elizabeth tries to solve the riddle that will free him of his memory loss. Both work in tandem throughout the taut thriller keeping the audience in the dark while spooling out threads of the mystery. Taking the lead as the tough gangster leader Franc, Vincent Cassel makes his character cruel and in some cases diabolical. He hires Elizabeth to get to the bottom of Simon’s dilemma so he can walk away with the prize, but as dangerous as he may be there’s always a catalyst.
The brilliant movie puts another jewel in the crown that Boyle keeps creating. For me, Trance will probably fill a slot in my top favorites for 2013. If you are not familiar with Boyle’s work, you should be as his genres are many, the stores are intuitive and most all have been honored. From Comedy like Millions where two boys relish in found riches, Horror of an infected population within the United Kingdom in 28 Days Later, Science Fiction revolving around astronauts trying to save Earth in Sunshine, Adventure with a group off on a vacation in Thailand who visit a strange island in The Beach, Crime and Drugs in Scotland are the theme for Trainspotting, Romance with Drama are the genre for a rich-man poor-man Slumdog Millionaire, a True Story Drama about a rock climber in peril gets featured in 127 hours and other hits that keep coming.
Trance has been rated R by the MPAA for sexual content, graphic nudity, violence, some grisly images, and language. As adults please watch the movie before deciding to allow anyone under 17 see the film as it does have some scenes that may be very inappropriate.
The special features are extremely good and have some excellent surprises.
- “Deleted Scenes” Not the usual stuff you get in a Blu-ray, here we get an extended look at what was left of the cutting room floor. Although the footage does not hurt the film with its deletion, it does clear up some minor details if you did not catch them in the showing.
- “The Power of Suggestion” This is a nice ‘making of’ that includes “Danny Boyle’s Film Noir”, “Hypnotized by”- the actors talk about getting hypnotized for real, “The Look” how the production designer set up the film, “The Final Rewrite”- the editing of the film, and more.
- “Danny Boyle Retrospective” here is a special bonus that you should not miss. Boyle goes over some of his top films, most of which are award nominees.
- “Short Film” This is a special treat called “Eugene” a very good comical short that had me in stitches. Do yourself a favor and only watch it after you have seen the film.
The video quality gets perfectly transferred from theatrical screen to home viewer. Although I am picky when it comes to size of the picture on my 16×9 television, the widescreen 2.40:1 Aspect Ratio does not bother here. It’s mainly because you get so focused on the action and the mystery of the plot.
The sound quality of the Blu-ray’s DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 keeps the dialogue prefect to the original filming. I found no distortion whatsoever, conversations were easily understood (Accents were a bother) and special sound effects nicely reverberated around the room.
Specifications and additional film information:
- Cast: James McAvoy, Rosario Dawson, Vincent Cassel, Matt Cross, Tuppence Middleton and Danny Sapani
- Directed by: Danny Boyle
- MPAA Rating: R for sexual content, graphic nudity, violence, some grisly images, and language
- Genre: Crime, Drama, Mystery
- Running Time: 1 hr 41 min
- Video Release Date: July 23, 2013
- Original Film Release Date: March 27, 2013
- Language: English
- Format: Blu-ray
- Audio: DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1, Spanish & French 5.1 Dolby Digital
- Video: Widescreen 2.40:1 Aspect Ratio
- Subtitles: English SDH, Spanish
- Number of Discs: 1 Disc
- Distributed by: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
