Okay, I'm going to be totally honest. I didn't particularly hate the new thriller Awake. I didn't think the script was as outright miserable as other critics are saying. I don't even think alleged actors Jessica Alba(Good Luck Chuck) and Hayden Christensen(Factory Girl) did as bad a job as either of them usually do. Like a couple of puppies, each missing a leg, they hobbled about the film as best they could and made do with what they had.
The real problem is that they didn't have much to work with in the first place.
Awake focuses on Clay Beresford Jr.(Christensen), a rich young man who's co-head of the company he shares with his mother and which was inherited from his late father. Clay seems to have everything going for him: a mother who dotes on him, millions of dollars(or billions; the film never really makes this point clear) at his disposal, and a hot young girlfriend named Sam(Alba) who loves him dearly. Alas, poor Clay, money can't buy you everything: ya got a bum ticker, kid...better go see a doctor.
Clay's doctor, it turns out, is Jack Harper(Terrence Howard), a decent surgeon who unfortunately has four malpractice suits going against him. However, he and Clay are friends, and so Clay goes to him out of that trust and loyalty when it's time for a transplant. It's been a bad day for Clay though; his mother, Lilith(Lena Olin) doesn't approve of Jack nor Sam, whom she's only recently found out has been dating Clay--and that the two intend to be married. So, being a rich young kid in New York(and apparently unafraid of losing all his cash, at which Lilith intimates), he impulsively takes Sam and gets married with Jack in attendance as best man. And just after the wedding(that same night!) a suitable donor is found for surgery. Sam escorts Clay to the hospital, he's prepped for surgery, and then for Clay(and alas, the audience) the nightmare truly begins when it turns out the anesthesia doesn't fully work. While the doctors prepare for the transplant, it turns out that while Clay can't make a move to warn them, he is actually fully awake.(Dah-dah-DAH!)
Anesthesia Awareness is a phenomenon which can occur during surgery for various reasons, most likely when a patient is not properly anesthetized. There are varying degrees of it, and the most severe cases can lead to mul-tiple post-traumatic stress-like aftereffects. One thing which should be made immediately clear: this condition is extreme-ly rare, and affects less than 1% of all patients who undergo general anesthesia. The official website for Awake states this is a common occurrence, and I honestly believe the American Medical Association should sue the Weinstein Company for making such a claim, which inadvertently could produce long-term detrimental effects for people who visit the site and choose not to undergo critical surgery which might have otherwise helped them. Seriously. Even to pro-mote a movie, that is an irresponsible path to pursue just to get asses in seats.
The movie, by first-time writer/director Joby Harold(is that a real name, or a fictional nom de plume, like Alan Smithee?) is similarly irresponsible when it comes to certain fairly important plot details and overall storytelling. For instance: what type of company do Clay and his mother run? At one point Dr. Jack reminds Clay that "You own half this city. You create jobs." When Clay's business acumen leads to a takeover of another company, he informs his mother they've just created 6,000 more jobs...yet we are never told what kind of company this is. There's not a company on Earth that exists solely to create jobs--a high school economics course will teach that's not the way things work! When Clay is about to go under the knife, the result-ant effects of the surgery process are nowhere near as gruesome, nightmarish or cringe-inducing as they are in real life, according to all material on the subject. If your film is about such a specific subject matter and you've been hand-ed an "R" rating by the MPAA, then use it! Director Joby Makebelievename misses a golden opportunity to have us squirm in our seats by allowing Clay's spirit to leave his body and exit the operating room to go on a type of quest to find out what's going wrong and who's behind the plot to kill him and take all his money(which he overhears while under). This is a big misstep for the director, as there are so many more intriguing ways the O.R. scenes could have gone.
It turns out his new bride, Sam, is the mastermind(ah-ha-ha-ha! Jessica Alba--a mastermind! Hahahahahahahaha...!)
{cough} Sorry.
{snicker}
No, really...Sam is the mas-mastermin...{chuckle}...{ahem}...mastermind behind the plot. Her grand scheme involved first becoming Lilith's assistant, then meeting Clay, getting him to fall in love with her, then making him think it was his idea to marry her!
Machiavelli, eat your heart out, you rank amateur!
And how much is ol' Brainiac looking to make out of the deal as a grieving inheriting widow, for her and her three cohorts(Jack, another doctor and assisting nurse)? Come on, folks...put your pinky to the corner of your mouth and in your best Dr. Evil voice, say it with me...
One hundred million dollars!
(split four ways)
Mastermind! Oh, my g-g-goddd! Bwah-hahahahaha...!
{cough} Sorry. Last time, I promise...!
If you're wondering why I said I didn't hate this movie, I'm beginning to wonder that myself. The thing about Awake is that while it doesn't really work as a film(especially not with a running time which doesn't even make it to an hour-and-a-half!), it has some interesting premises. When Clay's spirit leaves his body, he isn't immediately able to move about the free world wherever he wants. He has to relive the most immediate parts of his existence step-by-step, figuring out along the way how he could have been so blind as to his new wife's intentions. The spirit world he moves through is designed exactly like the real world and familiar settings, which makes sense. When he begins to die on the operating table, both streetlights and lights in his own home go off around him one-by-one, and that's actually a very nifty reasoning for the end of his standard life. We're shown no real hints of the afterworld, so for all intents and purposes, perhaps in this film there isn't one--perhaps when a person dies, they simply die. Again, another cool concept.
Unfortunately, such concepts are in short supply, and at points(especially when all the big revelations start coming out), the sloppiness of direction makes itself more known. How else to explain an early scene where Clay and Sam are grooming themselves side-by-side naked while facing a mirror, but Jessica Alba's pasties are clearly visible? And when all the so-called "clues" which have supposedly been in our face the whole time are revealed, it doesn't seem so much a clever trick as a desperate one; it feels like Joby Harold went back over his script and figured out what he could slip in which would seem like a clue, rather than start out with all the ideas on the page, as he should have done.
The actors do the best they can, but it seems some spark is missing. Terrence Howard, whom I've readily comp-limented in the past, seems like he sort-of changed his mind halfway through production and didn't really want to be there, so he doesn't even go so far to phone in his perform-ance; he faxes it instead. Perhaps in some odd way the pairing of Christensen and Alba as the young couple is a type of inspired genius: both actors are usually terrible, so they complement each other so well, together they make half a good actor, or in mathematical terms: Jessica Alba + Hayden Christensen x moderate acting ability = Keanu Reeves.
The only actors who rise above the script are Christoph-er McDonald(The Bronx Is Burning) as the alcoholic anesth-etist who subs for the original cohort who bows out, and Lena Olin(Romeo Is Bleeding) who may not have all the looks she once possessed, but still has the acting chops and one hell of a body to go with them.
In the end, the movie tosses out too many plot contrivan-ces and stretches plausibility to its breaking point. I'll skip the obvious joke that Awake will put you to sleep, because it actually won't...but it's just not really worth staying awake to watch in the first place.
Official Archives of LanceReviews...
Is there a script doctor in the house?
Someone wasn't quite awake when they wrote this thing.
"Guh-huh! I get to pretend I bag Jessica Alba in this flick!"
Terence Howard contemplates finding either a new agent, or a new line of work, if these are the types of roles he's going to keep getting.
"Okay, I'm sitting at the big boy desk...now I just have to figure out what kind of company I'm running!"
"Okay, after we kill my husband, you and I can run off and...um, sweetie? You didn't hear me say that, right?"
Hayden Christensen ponders why the spirit world doesn't have hospital gowns that close in the back.
"Let me ask you something...'cause I don't remember. Was I freebasing cocaine when I signed on for this?"
