James McAvoy, Rosario Dawson, Vincent Cassel
Danny Boyle
This too-clever-by-half urban thriller sets out to mess with your mind but ends up more testing your patience as the action flitters in and out of what its characters are supposed to think is real and what is imagined.
In lesser hands than Danny Boyle's you might be tempted to bring it all to an early close but his style saves the day, as does the performance of Rosario Dawson, who simply dominates proceedings as a hypnotist with questionable ethics, and motivation.
The script sees Joe Ahearne reworking a story he had made into a TV movie with the help of regular Boyle collaborator John Hodge and they throw the dialogue at you from the very first frames, setting up the premise - an art heist gone wrong - with long stretches of voiceover. It's a trick that's repeated by the story's end, too - just when there's a good chance you'll have no idea what's actually going on.