Rob Munday

French band The Shoes and promo director Daniel Wolfe appear to have come up with a surefire formula for music video success with their latest collaboration Time to Dance. So what’s the secret to their online hit? Simple, all you need to do is convince one of Hollywood’s biggest stars to put in an out-of-character performance as a drug-taking, sword-wielding, serial killer.

Clocking up over half a million hits in just 2 days, Wolfe’s epic music promo sees a bearded Jake Gyllenhaal hack and slash his way through a series of unsuspecting victims in a blood-soaked 8 and a half minutes. And the Hollywood heartthrob seems to be reveling in his role, his vacant, glazed stare burning through the screen every time he appears in this American Psycho-styled short.

This is familiar ground for both band and director, an earlier collaboration saw another talented actor strutting his stuff in truly psychotic form. Wolfe’s promo for track Stay the Same, featured one of the UK’s finest, Johnny Harris, twitching and stuttering his way across screen in a short that could almost work as a precursor to Time to Dance. The main difference being that whilst Stay the Same seemed to focus on mental health, Wolfe’s latest work doesn’t concern itself with explanations of its protagonist’s actions, instead Gyllenhaal’s murderous trail of destruction is graphically portrayed with little justification, but plenty of swagger.

Wolfe’s earlier promo for The Shoes managed to clock up just over 30,000 hits in the 11 months its resided on YouTube, his latest however has performed 20 times better in just 2 days. Is it a case of the video for Time to Dance being that much better than the one for Stay the Same? Or is this just a shining example of what you can achieve with just a little help from your A-list friend?