HOT ROD

The Texan firebrand who paralleled Tarantino’s verve and rise is still making movies with the same maverick ethos he did back in 1992 with just $7k. Robert Rodriguez tells Total Film how resourcefulness is his filmmaking touchstone as he realises a long-gestating project with throwback thriller Hypnotic…

- JANE CROWTHER

Robert Rodriguez has had Hypnotic in his head for two decades. Conceiving it while making Spy Kids 2 in 2002, the multi-hyphenate filmmaker – he produces, writes, directs, shoots, edits and scores his movies – found himself getting swept away with other projects (Once Upon a Time in Mexico, Sin City and its sequel, two Machetes, Alita) until he found his way back to his twisty-turny Hitchcockian mind-melter. Following Rourke (Ben Affleck), a cop with PTSD and a broken marriage after the abduction of his little daughter, Hypnotic poses the idea that people with special psychic abilities, ‘hypnotics’, can mess with our concepts of reality via suggested ideas or ‘constructs’. Affleck’s detective, teaming up with Alice Braga’s hypnotic, might be about to unravel a mystery of global proportions while trying to keep his sense of self as reality bends…

Playing like an old-school psychological thriller with noirish overtones, it could be considered something of a stylistic departure for Rodriguez, who’s notched up a cult following for his idiosyncratic, cool output and sensei standing as a master of independent filmmaking. A switch-up is exactly what he was aiming for, he says, when TF catches up with him in London in late April as he scores his latest creation.