Awake

A few years ago Chris Rock joked that Jude Law was in every movie that year, This year that person is Terrance Howard. Howard appeared in 7 movies this year, with Awake being the 7th. A few years ago this guy was starring in music videos and bad black-bonding movies and now he is appearing in every movie possible. Apparently he is someone who understands success is fleeting and he needs to capitalize as often as he can. Awake is one of those movies that creeps up on the box office. It was an under the radar project that had an upped release date, so we get it in 2007 instead of 2008. It had minimal push and promotion so when you watch it you have such low expectations that you will either be pleasantly surprised or come away getting exactly what you thought you were getting.

Clay Beresford(Hayden Christianson) own half of some unnamed city. His dad left him his entire fortune and he does great things to assure thousands of jobs in the city. Consider him a Bruce Wayne type. He is engaged to the gorgeous and horny Sam Lockwood(Jessica Alba) but neither of them acknowledge the engagement because Clay's mother, Lilith(Lena Olin) would never understand the engagement. See, Clay has a heart condition and is awaiting a heart transplant. His mother doesn't trust anyone and wants to continue to control Clay's life. Dr. Jack Harper(Howard) is the surgeon who brought Clay back to life over a year ago and they have become friends. Harper is going to perform the transplant because he is the only one Clay trusts. A heart finally emerges, but not until after Clay and Sam get married in a rushed ceremony and Clay and Sam head to the hospital for the surgery. Apparently 30,000 people out of every 1,000,000 that go under the knife suffer from something called "Anesthetic Awareness." That is they are awake and can feel everything that happens, but cannot call out or move. Clay suffers from this phenomena and as he tries to call out he removes his soul from his body. As he is under, but hearing everything, the surgeons, including Harper, are talking about how they plan to inject the heart with something that will make it not work, therefore killing Clay. Harper has 4 malpractice suits on him and it appears that killing Clay will help in someway. Clay spends his out of body experience trying to figure out what happened. I can't anything more without giving away the three "twists" in the movie, but they aren't really that twist worthy.

Awake is the kind of movie you watch and forget very quickly. It is not good but it is not bad either. it just completely average. It is so mundane that even the 90 minute run time feels longer than it needs to be. It looks like a lot of other movies- Sixth sense and Invisible- to name a few. Alba is gorgeous and does a fine job as the grieving wife and considering 3 minutes into the movie she is sitting in a tub with a soaking wet white tank top, she does her job. Christianson is still looking for who he is as actor and trying to rid himself of the stank of George Lucas but this is not really the part for him. He doesn't get to do much else but scream. Howard is slowly watching his shining star dwindle with a role that could easily have been played by any actor. It is a mostly one note performance and even the brief change of heart moment feels contrived and forced just to give a false conflict for the doctors. The end is mostly satisfying, although by that time you are kind of over what we are watching. The entire thing of Clay being out of body is almost unnecessary as he could find everything out he needs as he lays on the operating table, but I guess it wouldn't have been much of a movie without him running around the hospital. Also, there is a side plot involving flashbacks of his father's death that don't really add up to much of anything, but I guess when you are trying to get a movie to not be only 70 minutes long, you have to add some stupidness. The one shining thing in this movie is the beginning of the surgery. With Clay able to feel everything and us being treated to his inner monologue, the first cut they make on him is incredibly brutal and hard to watch. The audio of just hearing Clay is very well done and then when they pull apart his chest bones, we are treated to yet another crazy brutal moment and it really is effective, but that moment lasts only about 5 minutes total. but what we are left with is another 85 minutes of average film making.