Danny Boyle's Trance is a lo-fi Inception. A stylish heist thriller that turns into a film noir which plays mind tricks to its audience.

Simon (James McAvoy) is a man with a gambling problem and an auctioneer who has his head bashed during the robbery of Goya's Witches in the Air in the auction house he works in. Franck (Vincent Cassel) is the ruthless gang leader who planned the heist. However Simon was the inside man and he has amnesia and cannot remember where he hid the painting as he planned to double cross the gang.

Even torture does not work on Simon so Franck wants him to go to a hypnotherapist, Simon chooses Dr Elizabeth Lamb (Rosario Dawson) at random. However Lamb senses that Simon is in trouble and she makes a deal with Franck that she will unravel his memory for an equal share.

The introduction of Lamb means that the plot will get complicated by added layers, she makes Simon plunge one of the gang member's into a nightmare which just one key trigger word. So you can never believe what you are seeing and the character's motivations. Simon falls for Lamb who in turn starts a relationship with Franck. Lamb may genuinely wants to save Simon but she might have unlocked something troubling about Simon or she might just be a femme fatale.

Boyle's film has a lower budget than Christopher Nolan but it is no less cerebral. There are influences from Hitchcock to Guy Ritchie minus comedy cockney gangsters.

However by the end you realise that the film gets just too muddled and foolish for its own good. Maybe Boyle wanted to blur the lines of reality.

Dawson gives a daring performance where she bares all which does lead to Goya's depictions of the female form. The best performance is from Cassel, who switches from dangerous to charm so easily and is easily the standout in this film as the ever patient gangster waiting for Simon's memory to return.

A meagre film, both in terms of execution and narrative stylistics. As ever, the presence of director Danny Boyle is one of the worst things about this production: he's like a kid who's just opened a box of toys and is eager to show them off to all and sundry. Boyle saturates his movie with deep colours, snappy editing, heavy, thumping techno music that drowns out the dialogue and sound; basically overworking it for all his worth. It's like an old man trying to be hip and down with the kids, and it doesn't work, it's embarrassing.

Not that the story is exceptional to begin with: it involves a young auctioneer who's involved in the robbery of a priceless Rembrandt painting by a gang of thieves; the painting goes missing and only he knows where it is, but thanks to a bump on the head he can't remember. Cue the intervention of a pretty psychiatrist to try to help him out.

This is billed as the British INCEPTION but it's nowhere near as good as that film; for a thriller it's almost entirely boring, with a long and saggy mid-section that goes nowhere. McAvoy is okay playing the unlikeable lead, but the real scene stealer here is Vincent Cassel, and at least he bags at least one good scene. The main focus of the film is on the nude and lithe Rosario Dawson, who Boyle is clearly besotted with (the two were dating in real life at the time).

Come the end and the expected twist ending, I have to say that TRANCE is completely unbelievable: a film packed with plot contrivances, incredible jumps in logic, and a back story that makes absolutely no sense if you sit down and think about it. It's like there was a good story rooted in here somewhere, trying desperately to get out, but the scriptwriters just couldn't find it in the end.

In a well coordinated heist, Franck (Vincent Cassel) leads a team to steal a high priced painting. London auctioneer Simon Newton (James McAvoy) tries to put the painting in a timed vault slot. However Franck catches him and grabs the painting. Only it turned out that the painting has been cut out. Simon has amnesia, and Franck tortures him for it. In order to find out where Simon hid the painting, they randomly select hypnotherapist Elizabeth Lamb (Rosario Dawson) to help.

This is a case where Danny Boyle shows his hand too soon. It's almost immediately that we know Elizabeth is in on this somehow. She also figures out something is up with the sessions right away. This means that there is a twist coming without a doubt. And with hypnosis, it's also obvious that Simon is experiencing false reality. The audience finds out too much too early.

There is no doubt that Danny Boyle is a brilliant filmmaker. The heist is exciting and fun. The movie works well for awhile. But it just becomes very boring waiting for him to wrap everything up with an explanation at the end. And it doesn't help that somewhere along the way I lost rooting interest in everybody. I don't understand why Elizabeth would reveal herself so quickly. Wouldn't it make more sense for her not to show her cards considering who Simon is to her? Danny Boyle is great for this one thing. He is such a brilliant man that I didn't really ask questions while watching the movie.