Trance

Danny Boyle is fast assuming ‘national treasure’ status: he’s a warm spirited, generous interviewee, fantastically talented theatre director , and persuaded the Queen to play a role in his superb Olympic opening ceremony – before turning down the opportunity to become a knight of the realm. Here, he returns to his primary focus – movie making – with Trance, a London-set psychological crime caper starring James McAvoy, Rosario Dawson and Vincent Cassel.


Cassel is Franck, a criminal mastermind intent on stealing a valuable Goya from an art auction. His man on the inside is Simon (McAvoy), a young man with serious gambling debts and some dubious connections. But their carefully plotted heist goes badly wrong, Simon sustains a serious bang on the head and with it the painting – and his memory – are gone. Desperate to retrieve the £27.5m artwork, Franck employs beautiful hypnotherapist Elizabeth Lamb (Dawson) to try and unlock the information stored deep in Simon’s subconscious. But does she have criminal intentions of her own? And can we trust any of the central protagonists?

The film opens brilliantly, with Simon’s laconic voiceover talking us through the reassuringly old school theft, culminating in a bizarre stand-off between he and Franck in which, for reasons unknown, a grinning Simon attacks his employer – only to end up unconscious and with blood oozing from a nasty head wound. Making his escape from the scene, Franck soon discovers that he’s been double crossed – the Goya is missing. What follows is a slick thriller which combines elements of Christopher Nolan’s oeuvre (especially Memento and Inception) with some typical gangster clichés – but cannot hold a candle to Nolan’s output.

This is a film with very little heart, thanks largely to its inability to scratch beneath its glossy surfaces. And boy is it glossy. Vast swathes of the action take place in polished, mirrored rooms filled with huge flat-screen televisions and monitors. Reflections play a huge part in the action, with less-than-subtle hints that what we see is only an illusion. Of course, this is wholly necessary in a film which concentrates so intently on the idea of memory (be it false or otherwise), but it actually becomes tiresome after a while.

Thankfully, there are more than enough twists and turns to keep the viewer’s interest, with ideas of perception and mind-control to the fore, and a morally ambiguous trio of central protagonists being constantly reassessed – just who should we be rooting for? Better acting performances might have convinced us to take sides earlier, but Cassel is particularly lame here – he’s not the same actor when he abandons his native French for English.

To her credit, it’s Dawson who performs most admirably. Her introduction is the film’s finest moment – a polished and superbly edited view of her ‘curing’ her patients’ myriad problems overlaid with a soothing and cleverly crafted voiceover. She quickly becomes the centre of the action – the beneficiary of her (now failed) relationship with Boyle, perhaps – but she proves that she’s more than capable of holding her own alongside bigger names .

As the film hurtles to its conclusion, the action becomes darker and is all the more interesting for it. It’s a shame Boyle didn’t explore the murkier recesses of his characters’ minds earlier, but the looping twists and revelations keep coming right to the movie’s climax. That, though, might have diluted the film’s sense of disposability – and this is Boyle and long-time collaborator John Hodge having fun. There seems to be no moral or message here – just a desire to entertain and toy with their audience. In that sense, Trance is a success. And we’ll forgive the film its obvious flaws because… well, because it’s a Danny Boyle film.

Why The London Olympics Are Bullshit

And so, after seven years of planning and one of the most ostentatious displays of hype ever seen, the London Olympics begins in earnest today with a wonderful £27m opening ceremony presided by artistic director Danny Boyle. What will follow will be a three week celebration of sport which will inspire children all over the UK to participate in healthy activity and will leave a proud sporting legacy and billions of pounds in Britain’s depleted cash reserves.

Bullshit.

Whilst I am a fan of sport, i’m no Olympian. Too many of the events hold only marginal interest (shooting, sailing, lifting), others are far from their respective pinnacles (football, basketball, tennis). Those few events that do catch the eye largely occur on the track, but even they attract little interest other than in Olympic years – anyone follow Usain Bolt or Jessica Ennis closely in the Diamond League or World Championships? Thought not.

The build up has been arduous and controversial, with typically British balls-ups seeing G4S fail miserably to mount serious security despite seven years to prepare, missiles mounted in residential areas and an endless procession of myriad torches escorted around Britain’s shopping streets by a parade of home-grown heroes like Didier Drogba and will.i.am. The inescapable whiff of corporatisation has seen small businesses castigated and fined for selling ‘Olympic Breakfasts’ or hosting themed nights without permission whilst juggernauts like Mars, McDonalds and Coca Cola smear their grubby paw-prints over anything they can draw five rings on.

Somebody somewhere has guesstimated that the Games will generate £13 billion for the British economy – a ludicrous made up sum which belies the fact that people will not travel here from all corners of the globe during a financial catastrophe, that border control will force them to queue until they’ve missed the Olympics anyway and that it’s cheaper to commute from France than it is to stay in London. Of course, 400,00 unsold tickets add weight to this claim – thanks largely to huge over-pricing and a ticketing process in which acquiring a ticket required the patience of Mother Teresa and the internet acumen of Bill Gates.

The legacy will leave an expensive cycling velodrome with no owners, a £500 million pound football stadium being squabbled over by Leyton Orient and West Ham and a number of other white elephant cash cows struggling to justify their existence once the greatest show on earth pootles out of town. There is absolutely no evidence to show that previous Games have led to greater participation in sport and, anecdotally, I’ve seen little evidence of kids and young adults burning their way around running tracks and long-jump pits in the build up. Save for our magnificent cycling and swimming teams, these home Games are likely to see little improvement on recent performance and little follow-up in the aftermath.

A country which has just cut 67% from the school sports budget (rising to 100% in the next few years) whilst pouring billions into hosting this elitist, bloated corporate behemoth is, frankly, a fucking disgrace. To teach us and our children to strive to achieve at the Olympics whilst destroying the foundations on which sporting spirit, ability and endeavour are built is not British at all. We have been sold a lie.

127 Hours

After the success of Slumdog Millionaire, director Danny Boyle had the pick of any number of big budget projects. But instead of seeking massive financial support for his next project he gambled on a groundswell of goodwill to make a smaller-scale film – the kind that would only get the green light in the wake of his recent success.

That film is 127 Hours, the true story of Aron Ralston’s horrific act of self preservation in the Blue John Canyon, Utah. In the blaze of publicity for the film, it’s hard to believe that anyone might be unfamiliar with the story, but if you are...

Ralston (James Franco) is an adrenaline junkie who heads into the desert alone on his mountain bike. After a nasty fall down a narrow gorge an enormous boulder lands on his right arm, crushing it and trapping him. Following a period of (you guessed it) 127 hours he takes the only action which could possibly save his life: he cuts off his own arm. With a blunt pen knife.

The film opens with a hyper-kinetic series of images: utilising a 24-style split screen and thudding dance music it instantly notifies the audience of the high-octane lifestyle Ralston leads. It also quickly establishes his reckless nature – as he packs for a weekend away we see his water bottle overflowing, a utility knife he forgets to pack and, most importantly, a phone call from his mother which he ignores. This failure to alert anyone to his plans is crucial to what will unfold.

As Ralston crashes through a largely deserted desert on his bike it’s made blindingly clear that he’s an adrenaline junkie. Bouncing through the beautiful but barren country he tumbles from his bike, bounces back to his feet and moves on again – with music blaring on his walkman the whole time. A chance encounter with two hikers leads to a lesson in how charming he can be as they strip off and bathe in crystal clear waters but he’s soon on his way again –determined to be alone and enjoy the terrain.

The moment his accident occurs is fantastically well shot. Having skidded down the side of a narrow gulley, a huge rock lands on his forearm and hand, pinning him to the side of the gorge. For a moment there is perfect silence and stillness. After the loud, brash opening it’s a brief period of respite which marks the end of the film’s first act and the beginning of Ralston’s desperate fight to first stay sane and then stay alive.

It’s easy to imagine that a film about a static man with nobody to talk to might be slightly dull, regardless of the circumstances which led to it. But that would be to underestimate the facts of the story, the excellent direction of Boyle and the brilliant performance of Franco. Seeing the attempts Ralston makes to free himself, the ingenious ways he devises to support his weight and the lengths he goes to to keep himself warm is absolutely fascinating. And these decisions are often supported by a commentary provided by Ralston himself – thanks to the dramatic device of him having a video camera with him. This allows Boyle to add a certain amount of exposition to proceedings as Ralston records messages for his loved ones, explaining both his state of mind and actions. It almost seems too convenient as a plot device, but as it really did happen it would be foolish for the filmmakers not to take advantage.

There are some moments which fail to hit the mark so effectively – occasional flashback sequences or hallucinations seem a little showy or out-of-place. But all give an insight into Ralston’s thought processes and chart his descent into dehydration and desperation. Perhaps a little judicious editing might have weeded out one or two of these sequences and created a slightly more polished end product. But this is a minor quibble.

The ‘water-cooler moment’ will obviously be Ralston hacking through his whole arm. Admittedly, it’s pretty excruciating. But it’s not particularly graphic. There is a (literally) nerve shredding moment, plenty of blood and some nasty sound effects. But the dramatic power of the scene lies almost as much in what is not shown.

127 Hours was always likely to be a great film. The source material is rich and dramatic and almost begs the audience to ask themselves how they’d react in the same situation. The direction is great – Boyle always uses music effectively (although Dido does crop up here), knows how and when to change the pacing and dynamic, and his flair for the visual (particularly the spectacular blues and yellows of the desert) becomes more apparent with each film he makes. The lead performance is strong too: Franco is charming and believable, despite the character’s initial bull-headedness – the kind of role which most actors would give their right arm for...