Danny Boyle: Ranking His Films From Worst To Best

9. Trance (2013)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvTW1JecmZo Coming off the back of two major hits in Slumdog Millionaire and 127 Hours, his more minor-league psychological crime thriller Trance just doesn't come with the same heft. It depicts James McAvoy as an art auctioneer who ends up helping a gang steal a prized painting before hitting his head and forgetting where he stashed it. He consults a hypnotist (Rosario Dawson) to figure it all out, only for things to get even dicier from there. This is clearly Boyle trying to milk the success of Inception and deliver a similarly cerebral film that visualises abstract thought processes in a creative though not entirely successful way. Though the film looks nice, is well-scored and competently acted, the script just basically thinks it's a lot smarter than it is; it fails to even make us buy into the hynoptism before it begins to unfurl its ridiculous narrative thread, which asks the viewer to believe a few too many twists. Ambitious for sure, and an ambitious failure for Boyle.