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‘Awake’ a surreal medical drama
Movie Review: Awake
By Michael Farrar
Special to 2theadvocate.com
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It's all about trust and timing the anesthesia. More than once, l have sat in a dentist's chair with a numb sensation spreading in my mouth and wondered if the drilling and filling might outlast that tiny lidocaine shot. "Awake" takes that premise into major heart surgery but also adds in a conspiracy plot, sympathetic characters and top-notch performances for a full-fledged movie.
The 20-something Clayton Beresford has a sharp, global-business mind but a flawed cardiac muscle. His heart is also weak for Samantha (the radiant Jessica Alba), his fiancée under wraps. Why hide their love? Well, he has a lot on his plate -- giant corporate mergers, rich family politics, and oh yes, that major organ transplant the moment a suitable heart comes along.
Clayton's mother, Lillith (Lena Olin), dotes on him with the steely eyed caution of a wealthy matriarch guarding the family fortune and her only son. It's that mother and child bond that is at the root of Clay’s hesitance to reveal his engagement to mom's personal assistant.
Yet another source of conflict is Clayton's choice of surgeon for his transplant. Mom wants to install the cold expertise of Dr. Jonathan Neyer (Arliss Howard). However, Clay insists on Dr. Jack Harper (Terrence Howard), to whom he became close Harper saved him after his first heart attack.
While many films would skip character development and plug right into the gimmick of being alert but helpless as your own surgery unfolds, "Awake" allows us to know and care about everyone in Clayton's life as he faces death.
As a character, Clay has that John F. Kennedy Jr./Bruce Wayne type of guilt over possibly not being able to live up to everyone's expectations of them when compared to their departed fathers. But it's that very sense of self-doubt that makes Clayton so sympathetic in a real world sort of way.
But despite the rich set up, the movie does turn the corner into the supernatural realm when Clayton goes under the scalpel and discovers that he is fully aware of the operating room discussions. Is the surgical team conspiring to kill him with a scheme to get his vast family fortune? Or is just a trippy anesthesia-induced dream?
However, it’s not just his ears that are working, as the first incision makes clear. Even as his body remains still, Clayton is screaming in pain in his own twilight zone. Eventually, his spirit slips out of his body and walks around investigating his own "murder' in progress and who is really in on it.
He is not a powerful ghost but just a hapless observer, desperately struggling to piece the mystery together. This may sound like a dead end for a film, but watching him witness the hidden agendas revealed with his life on the line turns out to be more intoxicating than I had expected.
There are some neatly placed clues and plausible blind alleys that kept me intrigued all the way through to the end. The good news is that writer and director Joby Harold did it without taking me as an emotional hostage or letting me down with a clueless ending.
There is a brilliant and unexpected plot twist that truly changes dynamics in a surprising but believable way that is so rare in films that it was a joy when it came about in "Awake."
This movie is a bit like a crafty blend of TV's "Law & Order" and "The X Files" that should push drama buttons in your head and heart when you see it. "Awake" is not flawless, but it is sufficiently clever enough to make the overall ride a worthwhile movie ticket.
