Trance (15)

HHHH

Dir: Danny Boyle

With: James McAvoy, Rosario Dawson, Vincent Cassel

Runtime: 101 minutes

SUCH is the affection in which Danny Boyle is held post-Olympics, he could have filmed Mo Farah doing the weekend shop and audiences would have applauded. The Trainspotting director might even have got away with that cringeworthy bank advert featuring Jessica Ennis and co demonstrating that athletes are to acting what Judi Dench is to the long jump.

Fortunately, Boyle has instead turned in a crackerjack of an art heist thriller so full of knots and turns you will need the aid of a hypnotist to relax afterwards. Reunited with Scots screenwriter John Hodge (Shallow Grave, Trainspotting) this is Boyle doing what he does best – putting on a show. And if he loses the audience round the bend every now and then, or drives them there, it is all part of the funfair.

Besides Hodge (co-writer with Joe Ahearne), Boyle keeps the Scots flag flying by casting James McAvoy as the lead. This, though, is an international Thomas Crown-style affair, with Monsieur Vincent Cassel of Paris, New Yorker Rosario Dawson, and London itself vying for top billing with McAvoy.

McAvoy plays Simon, an auctioneer. We first meet him when the staff are being trained in what to do if a robbery occurs. Simon talks the audience through the drill at auctioneer pace, the watchword being that no piece of art is worth losing a life over. Yes, even the Goya that is about to go on sale.

Boyle doesn't linger long on Witches in the Air, so keen is he to throw everything else skywards and let the pieces land where they may. The painting is a MacGuffin, the hub around which everything will revolve, and Boyle and his cast have a lot of revolving to be getting on with.

After the worst fears of the insurance company are realised, Simon is hailed a hero for how he copes. Just one problem, however: Simon can only remember part of what happened during the robbery and the painting is missing. Also keen to know where the Goya has gone is Cassel's smooth operator criminal, Franck. Unable to plaster the neighbourhood with lost cat-style signs saying "Missing: A Precious Goya, answers to the name of 'Moola'", a hypnotherapist (Dawson) is drafted in to recover Simon's memory.

Boyle introduces Elizabeth with all the dash he did Ewan McGregor's Renton in Trainspotting. In a dazzlingly edited sequence he shows the good mind doctor at work, helping her clients with problems from overeating to gambling and all mundane sins in-between.

Simon is the next to take up residency in Elizabeth's soothingly decorated office, and it soon becomes clear that his memory bank is firmly locked. More inventive ways in must be found. As Simon is sent on a series of ever more fantastic journeys into his subconscious, Boyle delights in the chance to have some mind-bending fun.

In one such trip to the fuzzy side, Simon is seen hurtling through the French countryside in a Citroen 2CV while Chanson D'Amour plays. As ever with Boyle, the soundtrack is a belter. Not to worry, however, if you are not a fan of Wayne Shanklin's retro classic (ra-ta-da-da-da), the rest of the music, which includes Boyle's Olympics mucker Emeli Sande, is so achingly cool it could have spent the past few weeks in Scotland.

Divulging any more details of the plot would only spoil the caper. Enough to say that just when the viewer starts to think they have a handle on the tale, Boyle shakes the snow globe again. Depending on one's patience, this could prove wildly entertaining - or deeply irritating. In the middle section especially a certain narrative fatigue sets in. There are questions, questions everywhere, with not a drop of a solution to be had, and it begins to seem an awfully long time since we first met Simon in the gallery.

Once breath has been recovered, though, Boyle goes full pelt on the final act. His previous film, 127 Hours, was 97 minutes spent with a man who had his arm trapped between two rocks. Perhaps that is why the director is in such a tearing rush with Trance. He even fast-forwards through darkness falling and the sun rising. This Slumdog Millionaire pace and flu dream style work out well in the end, though.

As does his choice of leading man. McAvoy is up against some heavyweight competition here in Cassel and Dawson. The Black Swan and Mesrine actor stands so tall in all his pictures, in every sense, that he tends to overshadow everyone else. And that is before he rolls out that Chanson D'Amour accent. Dawson hasn't had a role worthy of her talents since 2010's Unstoppable, so it is no surprise she wolfs down the part of Elizabeth and spits the bones out.

All credit to McAvoy, then, for staying ahead of them both, and for keeping pace with Boyle's ambition. Golds all round.