Showing from April 26: Trance ***

Stars: James McAvoy, Vincent Cassel, Rosario Dawson.
Director: Danny Boyle.
Rated: R
Showing: Liberty Theatre. Daily 2:30pm.
Runtime: 101 minutes
Crime, drama, thriller.

Trance superficially seems like a regulation crime thriller. The theft of a precious Goya painting from a London auction house sets off a lethal game of hide-and-seek.

The early scenes with our chummy narrator Simon (James McAvoy), a junior executive who’s clubbed in the head during the theft, suggest that’s where things are going. But it’s all misdirection.

Trance is not a simple smash-and-grab yarn but an abstract psychological thriller. Moviegoers who expect a rote movie from British director Danny Boyle (28 Days Later, Slumdog Millionaire) will have the rug yanked from under them. Boyle is telling us a story of a perfect crime gone awry. But like his protagonist, he’s really shifty about it.

Trance is an artful experiment in refined sadism and mind control. Its whiplash shifts of perspective and chronology are brought off with breathtaking skill and visual vitality. Even as we’re aware of being manipulated, we savour the film’s expert control.

When Simon awakes in a hospital several weeks after his attack, the thieves’ leader, Franck (hawk-faced Vincent Cassel) swoops down on him. Only Simon knows where the Goya has landed, and Simon claims amnesia. When violent efforts fail to jog Simon’s memory, Franck’s gang takes a different approach. Keeping Simon in their cross-hairs, they send him to Elizabeth (a never-more-assured Rosario Dawson), an eminent hypnotherapist, to uncover the buried secret.

The film enters Simon’s subconscious and our own grip on reality comes unhinged. Trance proceeds in leaps, loops and layers.

It takes its sweet time deciding who that triumphant figure will be. It requires us to switch allegiance a couple of times too many. But I’d always recommend a movie that kidnaps me to dreamland over one that puts me to sleep.