Robert Rodriguez always tends to deliver his best work when he’s allowed to indulge his love of genre trappings and mix it with heightened action sequences, meaning that currently-shooting thriller Hypnotic has the potential to be one of his best directorial efforts in a while.
The multi-talented filmmaker has been toying with the concept for decades, and finally hammered the screenplay into shooting shape with a little help from MonsterVerse architect Max Borenstein. Ben Affleck heads up the cast as a detective investigating a series of crimes, who gets caught up in a conspiracy involving a top-secret government program that also concerns the unexplained appearance of his missing daughter.
Production is well underway on Hypnotic, but that hasn’t stopped the cast from growing. As per Deadline, Mayans M.C. and Fast & Furious 9 star JD Pardo has boarded the ensemble alongside Affleck, Alice Braga, William Fichtner and more, but there’s an air of bittersweet to the entire operation.
Production company Solstice is in the midst of terminating the majority of its executives and is expected to fold imminently, meaning that Hypnotic could well turn out to be the company’s last movie. Let’s hope it’s up to scratch, then, but there’s enough talent involved to remain positive.
