Movie review: Awake

by John P. Meyer

Derivative but serviceable medical thriller goes to the paddles once too often.

QUESTION: can there be something more going on in Awake than seems painfully obvious to anyone with brain functionality who sits through the first 15 minutes?

ANSWER: maybe a little.

This directorial debut by totally unknown quantity Joby Harold (who also wrote the script) has at least two roundhouse punches waiting in the narrative wings, the first of which is telegraphed with a windup you can see coming all the way from Cincinnati (regardless of which coast you may be living on). The second one originates from out of near left field and delivers a bouquet of freshness from amongst the brickbats of derivative plot material.

Clay Beresford (Hayden Christensen - aka Anakin Skywalker) is the charming and business-savvy heir to a New York fortune generated by his father (Sam Robards), who died when he was but a wee sprout. (Clay remembers little about his father's death, except that the old man was wearing a Santa suit when he keeled over. Talk about your negative holiday associations...) Now, Clay's mom Lilith (Lena Olin) devotes herself to grooming her son in the ways of successful financial magnate-dom, and he's a quick study.

Problem #1: Clay has a weak heart. So weak, in fact, that even at his young age he's already suffered a heart attack and is currently on a list to receive a donor heart for transplant.

Problem #2: Clay's in love, and his mom doesn't know about it. He's pretty sure she wouldn't approve, what with his weak heart and Croesus-worthy fortune to worry about and all - "but, Jesus, Mom," Clay might find himself saying, had I written his dialogue, "it's Jessica Alba, for cripes sake, playing a girl called Sam Lockwood, and her stuff jiggles when she brushes her teeth."

So there's fifteen or twenty minutes of setup during which we get to see Clay and Sam sneaking around expressing their surreptitious love for each other, then Clay fishing off a pier in the East River with his friend Dr. Jack Harper (Terence Howard), the guy who saved his life after Clay's heart attack. Dr. Jack's been designated by Clay to perform the transplant surgery once a donor heart shows up. Standing by in the Lilith-approved wings is another surgeon, Dr. Jonathan Neyer (Arliss Howard, exuding professional confidence and that never-say-die attitude that's so important in the demeanor of a heart doc who gets to crack the chests of fictional sitting presidents and other wealthy and/or powerful - if fictional - people).

The backstory having been thus established, filmmaker Harold moves things along to the dramatic core of the movie, which a publicist's email describes this way:

WARNING: this film depicts a horrifying, true-life surgical event known as “anesthetic awareness.” Awake may not be suitable for those about to undergo anesthesia for surgery. And, while we're at it, you must be THIS TALL to ride.

(O.K., so I made up that part about the height requirement.)

In any case, a great deal of the film's blessedly-brief 84 minutes takes place with young Clay under the knife (and the chest spreader) on the operating table, and of course we hear him whining (internally) about being aware of everything that's going on: "Ouch, that hurts! Stop with your cutting already! Can't someone just bonk me on the head with one a' those big Three Stooges mallets?" This would be bad enough under the most benign of chest-cracking procedures, but to make already dire matters worse, Clay hears his surgical team making remarks such as "go ahead and inject the new heart with that deadly poison so we can stitch it into his now-empty chest cavity and make his forthcoming death look like an unfortunate - though entirely unplanned - surgical outcome." Or words to that effect.

During all this Clay periodically drifts off to his happy place, which involves Sam/Jessica jiggling while brushing her teeth and doing a host of other girlfriend-type endearing things, such as romping in the surf (though presumably not the surf off the East River). These mid-surgical reveries eventually catapult our hero into an out-of-body sort of state, whereby he struts around outside the surgical theater and observes things that are going on with people that are not having their chests cracked open, such as Sam and Lilith. And his anesthetist, who's taking a mid-surgery break to make a phone call to his bimbo girlfriend while swigging from the hip flask he's hidden in the pocket of his scrubs. Clay's astral self tries WITH ALL HIS MIGHT to get various people to do various things to alleviate both his lack of unconsciousness and his imminent intentional demise.

If any of this sounds familiar, I'm not surprised and neither should you be, because we've seen (and read) it before. Most obviously, there's a diabolical short story by Stephen King called "Autopsy Room Four" (made into a short film) that features the same sort of striving WITH ALL ONE'S MIGHT to get a surgical team to notice that one's lights are not entirely out, except in that instance the subject was presumed dead rather than merely anesthetized. Filmgoers might also be reminded of The Invisible, which features a character astrally projecting WITH ALL HIS MIGHT in an attempt to make other flesh-and-blood characters listen up.

As mentioned, there's a clever plot twist in store, but it's overshadowed by the slipshod planning involved in the surgical homicide plot. To top it off, one of the primary plotters fails to exhibit the modicum of resolve it would take to turn a bad plan gone south into an heroic salvage operation.

There's a nice touch of comic relief as two separate characters facing imminent death allow their spectral selves a final spectral cigarette before crossing over. It seems the nicotine craving extends even to the astral plane.

As for Ms. Alba: what is it with her and transplant movies all of a sudden? In her next starring role she plays the lead in the Hollywood remake of a creepy Hong Kong ghoster called Jian Gui, rechristened The Eye for the benefit of gwai lo audiences, who will get a look at it next February.

BAD CHOICE OF WORDS WHEN ADDRESSING YOUR SURGICAL TEAM'S ANESTHESIOLOGIST: "Be gentle with him, O.K.?"