Awake [Import]

Better than I had expected, but certainly not top-notch entertainment.

"Awake" is not an wholly original idea as Stephen King explored this idea in one of his short stories in which a person is mistakenly believed to be dead and is about to undergo his own autopsy. Here someone undergoes surgery while still awake and learns who his friends really are and aren't. Read the synopsis by Amazon as they did a very good and fair job. I'm going to take the real lazy way out this time and just go to my hits and misses.

Misses:

1. Too slow at points. There is a lot of exposition (with good reason), but it is still a lot of exposition.
2. The acting is not consistent. Some are terrific and others are flat.
3. So many plot twists that one just can't give this film the "willing suspension of disbelief" that it needs.
4. It moves from romance to health crisis, to scientific wonders, to absolute fantasy. It attempts to cover too many genres. That whole out of body sequence is clever, but just way out of place in this film. It's like Brian's Song meets What Dreams May Come.

Hits:

1. While not completely original (Sublime had many elements here), it is in it's own way. It is a very interesting film and it does have a few very good surprises.
2. Jessica Alba is finally in a role that isn't so cutesy. I thought she way quite convincing in her role.
3. Hayden Christensen is better than usual, but that may not be too big of a compliment.
4. Terrance Howard and Arliss Howard are always a pleasure to see, even if they are phoning in their performances for a quick paycheck.
5. This film is a short 84 minutes, so even if it isn't all you wanted or expected, it is short.
6. bloopers are hysterically funny.

I got a mild kick out of this film. I wouldn't recommend anyone to actually go see this in the theaters, but it's a good rental film.

AWAKE would be better named 'audience wake up' as the minimal novel idea of the story loses credibility so quickly that the development of the subplots become increasingly tedious and silly. Joby Harold both wrote and directed this film and despite the presence of some fine actors, the film remains grounded.

Clay Beresford (Hayden Christensen) has inherited his dead father's multi-billion dollar fortune and shares the wealth and control of his empire with his domineering mother Lilith (Lena Olin). Clay apparently has a genetically determined cardiac pathology, is medicated, and awaits a heart transplant. The only semblance of honest life Clay has is his love for his mother's secretary Sam (Jessica Alba) who, despite Lilith's objections, marries Clay after disclosing their relationship. Clay's beeper warning that a cardiac donor is available cuts short their night of honeymoon and Clay is rushed to the hospital to his constant friend, Dr. Jack Harper (Terrence Howard), who just happens to be a heart transplant surgeon and who Clay prefers over Dr. Neyer (Arliss Howard), the superior cardiac surgeon friend of his mother who has been the designated surgeon all along. The gimmick of the film is 'anesthetic awareness', a state of anesthesia when the patient is paralyzed but aware of the talk in the OR as well as the pain of the surgery. What Clay hears 'under anesthesia is a ridiculous, convoluted plot involving all the people he thought he could trust and about which he can do nothing: in order to keep the storyline rolling, the script gives him an out of body experience so that Clay can be his own detective in solving the myriad discrepancies of his situation. The ending is very predicable and begs viewer indulgence.

Perhaps the credibility of this story would have been better if the director and actors had paid more attention to OR technique: walking into an OR in street clothes, handling patients without gloves or masks, allowing outsiders to enter the OR during a transplant procedure, beginning surgery without documentation of complete anesthesia or before the donor heart arrives, etc. etc. etc. are such breaches of surgical rules that even the casual viewer of TV medical dramas knows. But the real problem with the script is that we are left caring very little for any of the characters, despite the fact the roles are assigned to some heavy hitters! Sadly, the movie is just silly. Grady Harp, March 08

Predictable. I really can't get too excited about this movie. Now anything with Jessica Alba is a "man treat" but this one really was just
average. All in all interesting and ok to watch but don't expect to be wide awake at the end.