2008 Woodie Awards
A film unfortunately awake in title only
Film Review: Awake
Anna Wiegenstein - The Daily Iowan
Issue date: 12/3/07 Section: Arts
- Page 1 of 1
** out of *****
The statistics at the start of Awake claim that more than 30,000 people a year suffer from so-called "anesthesia awareness," as does the film's protagonist. That is, instead of "going under" for surgery, they are put into a state of paralysis, unable to move or speak, but perfectly capable of feeling every incision made upon them. I'll give you a paragraph break to consider the horror of that.
Now then, Awake doesn't cite the source on that little tidbit, but the thought of it happening at all was terrifying enough to make me more interested in a movie thus far focusing most of its ad campaign on the pretty faces of its stars, Hayden Christensen and Jessica Alba. Afterward, though, I can't say the diagnosis for writer/director Joby Harold's psych-thriller is all that great.
The problem is inherent - though it's interesting to deal narratively with such a scary-sounding medical fluke, things onscreen can get boring fairly fast. After all, your main character is frozen in place, without making a sound - not the greatest for an action-packed scene. Thus, Awake has to create routes around this most basic of design flaws, and some work better than others.
Clay Beresford (Christensen, still trying to find a medium between the nadir that was Star Wars and the high of Shattered Glass) is a very rich young man. We see him typing at a desk and making a vague merger with some Japanese businessmen, so he's obviously successful. His mother, Lilith (Lena Olin, head and shoulders above the rest) cherishes him dearly, so he's hesitant to tell her about his romance with Sam (Alba, still apparently learning the craft of inflection). As for Christensen and Alba's onscreen chemistry … well, they both are certainly very pretty, and the pair of them making out is pretty, too.
Meanwhile, he's the victim of a bum heart, waiting for years on a transplant list - that is, until the day the call finally comes, and his close friend/physician Jack (Terrence Howard) can get him on the operating table at last. Then, of course, comes the faulty anesthesia, leading Clay to learn much more than he was ever meant to know.
I don't mean to speak in annoying press-release-speak like that on purpose, but part of what Awake does right is in allowing much of the plot to steadily unfold over the first half. In fact, things seem to fall apart once Clay gets sliced open - the determined, well-paced opening of the film is replaced by a lot of unnecessary spoken plot exposition (not to mention enough medical misinformation even I noticed it) and a conceit already done better by Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Harold was obviously proud of the nifty-sounding plot of Awake, so much so that everything else in the film - characterization, for example - got rather shortchanged in favor of the story. Too bad, then, that even a narrative with a built-in horror at its core ends up being such a snooze.
E-mail DI reporter Anna Wiegenstein at:
anna-wiegenstein@uiowa.edu
The statistics at the start of Awake claim that more than 30,000 people a year suffer from so-called "anesthesia awareness," as does the film's protagonist. That is, instead of "going under" for surgery, they are put into a state of paralysis, unable to move or speak, but perfectly capable of feeling every incision made upon them. I'll give you a paragraph break to consider the horror of that.
Now then, Awake doesn't cite the source on that little tidbit, but the thought of it happening at all was terrifying enough to make me more interested in a movie thus far focusing most of its ad campaign on the pretty faces of its stars, Hayden Christensen and Jessica Alba. Afterward, though, I can't say the diagnosis for writer/director Joby Harold's psych-thriller is all that great.
The problem is inherent - though it's interesting to deal narratively with such a scary-sounding medical fluke, things onscreen can get boring fairly fast. After all, your main character is frozen in place, without making a sound - not the greatest for an action-packed scene. Thus, Awake has to create routes around this most basic of design flaws, and some work better than others.
Clay Beresford (Christensen, still trying to find a medium between the nadir that was Star Wars and the high of Shattered Glass) is a very rich young man. We see him typing at a desk and making a vague merger with some Japanese businessmen, so he's obviously successful. His mother, Lilith (Lena Olin, head and shoulders above the rest) cherishes him dearly, so he's hesitant to tell her about his romance with Sam (Alba, still apparently learning the craft of inflection). As for Christensen and Alba's onscreen chemistry … well, they both are certainly very pretty, and the pair of them making out is pretty, too.
Meanwhile, he's the victim of a bum heart, waiting for years on a transplant list - that is, until the day the call finally comes, and his close friend/physician Jack (Terrence Howard) can get him on the operating table at last. Then, of course, comes the faulty anesthesia, leading Clay to learn much more than he was ever meant to know.
I don't mean to speak in annoying press-release-speak like that on purpose, but part of what Awake does right is in allowing much of the plot to steadily unfold over the first half. In fact, things seem to fall apart once Clay gets sliced open - the determined, well-paced opening of the film is replaced by a lot of unnecessary spoken plot exposition (not to mention enough medical misinformation even I noticed it) and a conceit already done better by Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Harold was obviously proud of the nifty-sounding plot of Awake, so much so that everything else in the film - characterization, for example - got rather shortchanged in favor of the story. Too bad, then, that even a narrative with a built-in horror at its core ends up being such a snooze.
E-mail DI reporter Anna Wiegenstein at:
anna-wiegenstein@uiowa.edu
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