Reel Politique: Movie Review, Awake
Awake is a cacophony of accents. This medical thriller with supernatural elements plays host to a set of the most annoying voices now working in the movies. First off there is Hayden Christensen as the scion of a Manhattan entrepreneur who needs a heart transplant. Christensen, the former beta version of Darth Vader, is notorious for his fractured uncertain lingo, unheard on the screen since Stephen Boyd. His raw sound perfectly suited Shattered Glass where he played the callow huckster, but everywhere else he simply sounds unconvincing. In this he was the new Kyle MacLachlan, though that model improved considerably over the years. Meanwhile, Terrence Howard, as the best friend and heart surgeon conducting the transplant, speaks in a fluty monotone that, after several films, is beginning to grate; he’s entering Cuba Gooding, Jr., level of annoyance. There is also Lena Olin with her attractive but sometimes inaudible Swedish accent, as the scion’s widowed mother who literally gives her heart to her son, and finally there is Jessica Alba, who, like many of her confreres in the picture biz, finds it profitable to mimic the girly voice of stripper speak. She plays the secret fiancé of the scion, whom he is yet ashamed to introduce to his judgmental mother.
The medical thriller part of the tale begins when the lad goes in for his heart transplant (by the way, it is unclear as per the crime plot if he even really needs one, though he does by the film’s 50th minute). He is anesthetized but doesn’t go under. Thus he is awake but frozen as his doctor takes a buzz saw to his chest. An opening crawl indicates that this happens in 1 out of 700 or so cases, a most unnerving statistic, though the situation hasn’t cropped up on House yet.
This state, called anesthesia awareness, has only tangential importance to the mystery plot, in that it “allows” the patient to have an incredibly helpful out-of-body experience in which he investigates what is about to be his own murder for profit. He is able to hear real dialogue in the real world, but also socialize with the ghost of his mother, who isn’t even dead yet. As medical thrillers, the film doesn’t have the suspense of Coma or the sheer convoluted brilliance of Malice, but it is easy to follow, if preposterous.
The film was written and directed by Joby Harold two years ago, according to other reports, and Mr. Harold is someone whose meager credits include a thank you on a film about the screenwriter Dalton Trumbo. Trumbo may not have been as great a screenwriter as his later martyrdom before HUAC makes us want to believe he is, but he was a great day to day writer, as his letters show, while Mr. Harold’s film is laden with laborious situation setting, an obligatory quasi-sex scene to establish the “beauty” of the romance, and a visual catalog of glamorous apartments, spacious offices, impressive great rooms, and toy-filled bedrooms. Oh, for the days of theatrical economy as found in Trumbo’s efficient screenplays. One of the final twists comes out of Hitchcock’s Marnie of some 40 years ago.
It should also be noted that Samuel Sim’s music is typical of contemporary scores, a continual tuneless see-sawing. On the other hand, Awake also features in minor roles the great Christopher McDonald as a substitute anesthesiologist, and Arliss Howard, impressive and commanding as the heart surgeon who takes over the operation at the last minute.