A Wake would be a more appropriate title (Awake (DVD))

Member Name: tommy7

Product:	Awake (DVD)
Date:	04/05/09 (117 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Mercifully short

Disadvantages: Too many to mention

"Awake" was a film I intended seeing at the cinema but never got round to it. The trailer immediately hooked me in. The main character, Clay Beresford (Hayden Christensen), inherited a huge estate from his father and has everything you could ever want, apart from a healthy heart. Whilst undergoing a heart replacement operation he experiences anaesthetic awareness, a condition where you can feel and experience every aspect of an operation but are unable to move. Seemingly this affects 30,000 people a year which works out at about 1 in 700. The clever part to the story here is that Clay hears the surgeon and his team planning how to make the transplant fail meaning that Clay will die. What can Clay do when he is incapable of movement??

I thought this was an excellent premise for a film and eagerly sat down to watch it. However, I was thrown a little for the first half of the film, all that I have put above is in the trailer so I assumed that this would cover the first 15 minutes of the film. However, what actually happens is we get the story of Clay covering up his relationship with Sam Lockwood (Jessica Alba) from his domineering mother Lilith Beresford (Lena Olin). Again, everything is perfect in Clay's relationship with Sam, other than the fact he is too afraid to disclose it to his mother. We find out that they are engaged and looking to set a date to get married.

Clay doesn't appear to have many friends. The one exception being Doctor Jack Harper (Terrence Howard) who had previously saved his life when his heart caused more problems. Encouraged by Jack, Clay rushes through a wedding with Sam knowing that he has little time left unless a healthy heart can be found for him.

Jack is Clay's choice to perform the operation. Having already saved his life once he trusts the man and much to Lilith's disgust he doesn't want to use the celebrity surgeon Lilith has a relationship with. Clay is aware of the four malpractice suits against Jack and they joke about the culture of suing who you can.

This is as far as I will go in setting the scene but you can see from above that there are a few characters introduced. All of whom seem to have their own agendas which are not immediately clear.

With the film having a run time of just over 80 minutes it made it all the more surprising that it took so long to get to what the trailer revealed. I must admit I did enjoy how well the scene was set in the opening 40 minutes and there seemed to be enough sub-plots going on to allow the development of the story. Unfortunately this is where things started going badly wrong.

What follows are probably the most ridiculous collection of actions and events I have ever seen. Without wanting to spoil the story there is a barely plausible moment in the final half-hour. The audience are also spoonfed why every character has worked out what is going on. This was unnecessary and just added to the frustration.

I felt the acting was reasonably good throughout. Terrence Howard is always watchable and Lena Olin really just played a similar character to the one she played in the television series Alias. Jessica Alba was quite convincing in the role and Hayden Christensen was Ok, although at times appeared a little out of his depth as someone in such a position of power. To be fair to the actors they weren't given much to work with here.

I guess the biggest frustration with the movie is that it failed to produce a story fitting of the concept. I couldn't help get the feeling that there was the possibility for a truly great story to come from this. However, as my girlfriend commented, "this is so cheesy Edam should sponsor it". Sadly, I found it impossible to disagree.

The sole positive was the running time. At least I didn't waste more time on this.

Avoid.

Summary: Awful