Danny Boyle's Trippy 2013 Thriller Features James McAvoy's Most Underrated Performance

Danny Boyle was on a scorchingly hot streak heading into 2013's "Trance." His "Slumdog Millionaire" took home eight Academy Awards in 2009, including Best Picture and Best Director, and he followed that up with the terrifically intense survival drama "127 Hours" (which didn't win any Oscars but was nominated for six). So, he rolled that momentum into "Trance," which was touted as a back-to-basics thriller starring James McAvoy, Rosario Dawson, and Vincent Cassel. And he was going to need this palate cleaner, too, because he'd just landed the assignment of a lifetime: directing the Opening Ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.

We know now that the Olympics were a spectacular success, highlighted by Daniel Craig's James Bond parachuting Queen Elizabeth II into the middle of the Olympic Stadium. (It was obviously staged yet brilliantly sold.) It was an exhilarating achievement, but once the elation wore off, Boyle had to hunker down in an editing suite to piece together the mind-bending, amnesiac film he'd shot prior to the Olympics. As Boyle told me in a 2013 interview for the discontinued Backstory Magazine, "Ideally, when you finish shooting, you take a little break. But it's not enough for you to forget the film. When you finish shooting it, you think you'll never forget it, but after six months of the Olympics, believe me, you do."

Critics were mixed as to whether he pulled it all together, but I think "Trance" is a superlative piece of pure cinema that finds Boyle scratching his Brian De Palma and Nicolas Roeg itch. It's weird, a little surreal, and sexy as hell, with McAvoy doing some of his most underrated work.

Danny Boyle's feature debut, "Shallow Grave," was an energetically directed dark comedy that drew comparisons to the Coen Brothers' early oeuvre (giving Ewan McGregor his big break in the process). A stylist supreme, Boyle then made a "Raising Arizona" leap with "Trainspotting." From there, like the Coens, he went to 20th Century Fox to helm his first studio effort ... and followed the siblings' lead by making a box office disappointment. Indeed, 1997's "A Life Less Ordinary" was a shotgun spray of a rom-com fantasy led by a game McGregor and Cameron Diaz. Fox's belief in Boyle wavered a bit, but he didn't stray far from his first studio home after that (and soon made a killing for it with "28 Days Later").

Based on a story by British sci-fi writer Joe Ahearne, whose screenplay was fleshed out by longtime Boyle collaborator John Hodge, "Trance" stars James McAvoy as Simon Newton, the inside man on an art theft heist where he's knocked unconscious. He's hidden the loot, but he has no idea where it is. Enter Rosario Dawson's hypnotist Elizabeth Lamb, who can hopefully crawl into his subconscious and recover a windfall for his accomplices.

The less you know going in, the better. But you should go in ready to get turned on. As Boyle told me, "It's weird how movies have veered away from sex as a tool you use in the cinema. When I grew up, going to see movies in the '70s, it was everywhere. A powerful part of the hypnotic trance of films was sex, especially for a young guy watching it. It's always surprised me how few films use it."

Looking for a thriller with hotties like McAvoy, Dawson, and Vincent Cassel? Melt your living room with "Trance."