Movie Review: Awake

Awake (2007) 

Directed by Joby Harald 

Written by Joby Harald 

Starring Hayden Christensen, Jessica Alba, Lena Olin, Terrence Howard 

Release Date November 30th, 2007

Published November 29th, 2007

Anesthetic awareness is something that happens to a small percentage of patients placed under surgical anesthesia. The patient is thought to be made unconscious by the anesthesia but for whatever reason they are not fully under. For some patients it can mean recalling conversations that took place between the surgeons for some it's a modest amount of pain.

For a small percentage of patients anesthetic awareness means full awareness of everything from the surgical banter to the pain of surgical steel slicing skin and cutting bone. The new thriller Awake from writer-director Joby Harold takes this concept and builds a surprisingly captivating thriller around it.

Hayden Christensen, yes baby Vader himself, stars in Awake as Clay Beresford. A son of privilege's, Clay has never wonted for anything. Now as an adult, Clay has one thing he desperately needs, a new heart. Clay is dying unless he can get a heart transplant. While his mother (Lena Olin) is maneuvering to get a world renowned heart surgeon (Arliss Howard) to perform Clay's surgery, he has become attached to his own doctor, Jack Harper (Terrence Howard).

Adding to the mother son tension is Clay's secret romance with mom's assistant Sam (Jessica Alba). Clay and Sam have been sneaking around together for months, difficult because mama's boy Clay still lives at home and works for mom's company. When his surgery day finally arrives Clay must tell mom that not only have he and Sam been sneaking around, they married in the middle of the night.

Once the surgery is under way the real twists and turns begin. A last minute replacement anesthesiologist (Christopher McDonald) fails to put Clay completely under. This leaves him fully awake but unable to move or speak as the surgeons begin there work.

Written and directed by Joby Harold, Awake has more twists and turns than you might expect from such a unique and seemingly constrictive plot. The movie has taken nearly two years to get to the screen. Harold and company finished filming in late 2005 but Harold could not find a final cut that he was happy with. Nearly two years later he has found just the right combination of ludicrous melodrama and edge of your seat excitement.

There is a definite B-movie quality to every thing about Awake. This aesthetic however, really works for this slightly goofy material. The story involves a guy wandering around outside his body trying to get someone to help him and then taking an inner journey through his memories to figure out how he got there. There is an even more goofball moment late in the film that works on it's own logic but I won't reveal it here.

So much of Awake has a B-movie thrill from the modest nudity (Side Boob) of Jessica Alba to Hayden Christenson's weird take on existential angst. His harried inner voice as he, paralyzed by anasthetic listens intently to his surgeons is both goofy and engaging. Just the right amount of disbelief and earnest horror mingle in his breathless attempts to move, shout or just squeeze out a tear.

Jessica Alba makes for terrific eye candy but the twists and turns of this plot call for a different actress. To reveal more might jeopardize some of the unique twists and turns of this off the wall but more often engaging little thriller. Without giving to much away, someone like Elisha Cuthbert or Erika Christensen would likely have been more appropriate for the role. For one thing, their star power would not completely overwhelm the already weak draw of Hayden Christenson, as Ms. Alba most certainly does.

Perfect for her role however is Lena Olin. As Clay's shifty, scheming mother Olin is snaky and sexy. Appearing to be the villain of the piece, Olin brings unique shifts in tone and twists you will not see coming. She threatens to bring some civility and talent to this B-movie enterprise. Thankfully, respectability is out the window by the time mommy brings the films biggest and most laughable twist. Yes, it's goofy as all get out, but it works in the logic of this ludicrous universe.

Writer-Director Joby Harold smartly attacks this B-movie material by creating his own unique universe where the ill-logic of the films many twists and turns can exist in their own believable way. There is no attempt to make these situations realistic, the film flows with the ludicrous and outlandish and creates a way for those things to exist and be quite gripping.

Awake is far from great 'cinema' but for cheap, goofball melodrama, existential angst and a tapping of real human fears (awake on an operating table! Yikes!) this is a crafty and fun little flick, more than worthy of a turn in your DVD player.

Movie Review Hollywood Homicide

Hollywood Homicide (2003) 

Directed by Ron Shelton

Written by Ron Shelton

Starring Harrison Ford, Josh Hartnett, Master P, Lena Olin, Bruce Greenwood, Isaiah Washington, Keith David, Dwight Yoakam, Martin Landau

Release Date June 13th, 2003 

Published June 12th, 2003 

Every time I complain about a film’s marketing campaign I get emails asking me why I complain about something that has nothing to do with the film. I politely disagree with that sentiment. A film’s marketing shapes your perception and the movie Hollywood Homicide is an excellent example of my feelings. The ad campaign of the film is accompanied by a rap soundtrack that is not only misleading, it's misguided. That aside, and despite his aging demographic, Ford shows in Hollywood Homicide that he's still got that magical IT quality that makes a superstar.

In Hollywood Homicide Harrison Ford is Joe Gavilan, real estate agent by day, Hollywood homicide cop at night. His young partner is KC Calden (Josh Hartnett), who is also a part-time yoga instructor and wannabe actor. The two are brought in to investigate the murder of an up and coming rap group in a LA nightclub owned by Julius (Master P). In one of the film’s funniest moments, Joe takes time out from the investigation to pitch Julius about a house he has for sale. The murder sets the plot in motion but there is something else going on in this film.

In most cop movies, we would track from the evidence that implies the rap groups record company owner killed them for trying to break their contract. Isaiah Washington fills that vaguely Suge Knightish role. However at some point in the making of Hollywood Homicide, director Ron Shelton forgot about this by-the-numbers plot and fell in love with his quirky characters. Lucky for him, these are great characters and even better actors playing them.

As the murder plot becomes merely a subplot, it's the weird friendship between Ford and Hartnett that takes center stage and the two actors show an excellent chemistry. Ford also has a subplot with the wife of one of his fellow LAPD detectives, who also happens to be working for the bad guys. Lena Olin fills the role of Ford's love interest and brings a mature sexuality to what could have been a throwaway role. There are a couple of strands of plot also working throughout Hollywood Homicide, such as Dwight Yoakam as a dirty former cop working for Isaiah Washington and his connection to the murder of Hartnett's father. Yet again, such plot machinations are merely background for the actors.

The film’s ending is a car wreck, literally and figuratively. The figurative car wreck is the number of unresolved plot points that are simply thrown away or disregarded. Bruce Greenwood in particular gets the short shrift as his character arc is resolved with little notice to the audience as to why or how. Not that it made any difference to the plot but it didn't fit any kind of logic. You can tell a lot of this subplot was left on the cutting room floor. In fact, from the messy narrative that is on display, I would bet the director’s cut must have been just over three hours just to explain the extraneous plot points..

You can speculate for hours as to what happened during the filming of Hollywood Homicide that brought it to it's current state. Despite my praise of the film’s leads and its humor, the film is a real mess from a plot standpoint. One could wonder if the obvious allusions to Suge Knight in Isaiah Washington's character caused that character to be cut back a good deal. You can see many of the cop movie cliches fighting to surface and Shelton seemed to make a very pronounced effort to downplay those cliches. He leaves the film’s big action movie moments until the end of the film and focuses on the films strengths, it's actors and the humor they generate from their interaction.

That doesn't make the film feel any less messy but it makes it far more tolerable than it might have been. -

Movie Review: The Reader

The Reader (2008)

Directed by Stephen Daldry

Written by David Hare

Starring Kate Winslet, David Kross, Ralph Fiennes, Bruno Ganz, Lena Olin

Release Date December 12th, 2008

Published Decemebr 11th, 2008 

The first 45 minutes, give or take, of The Reader starring Kate Winslet and newcomer David Kross, are some of the more bizarre minutes in any movie this year. These awkward, sexy, meandering scenes offer some of the more uncomfortable laughs I have had at any movie this year aside from Sex Drive. My mention of a teen sex comedy in relation to what is essentially a holocaust movie should give you the impression of just how uneasy I was feeling during these early scenes. 

David Kross plays Michael Berg, a teenager in 1950's Berlin who gets very ill walking home from school. A tram worker, Hannah (Kate Winslet) with a rather severe sensibility, kindly walks him home. He returns to her building later to thank her for caring for him. It begins an entirely uncommon affair that will shape the rest of Michael's life. Director Stephen Daldry, I'm sure, wishes to exploit the clumsy sexuality of a 15 year old, not an uncommon topic in movie. 

Here however, the fumbling earns laughs in the strangest most uncomfortable ways, including showing young Michael bared completely before his new love and us. Don't worry, actor Kross is over 18. Admittedly, that fact is not all that comforting. Maybe the bigger sin of these early scenes is the fact that Hannah's motivations for getting involved with the young man she simply calls Kid, are entirely unclear. One moment she is demanding a favor, the next minute she is nude, he is nude, and a stilted lesson in sex is underway.

Then, one day, Hannah is gone. She has cleared out of their little love nest and Michael is devastated. Cut to several years later, Michael is at law school. His professor, Rohl (Bruno Ganz) a Jew who survived the death camps takes Michael and several other promising students to a trial where people who worked in the Nazi death camps are on trial. The defendants are women who worked as guards at Auschwitz. It should be no logical leap for you, my friends, to figure out that Hannah is one of those on trial. Michael says nothing. Then, Hannah tells a damning lie that Michael knows he can refute.

I will leave you to discover Michael's choice and the consequences. After a weird start, with heavy, R-rated sex, The Reader slowly becomes a gut wrenching drama. Ralph Fiennes becomes the elder Michael and his relationship to Hannah in the years after the trial is touching and sad. The film dances precariously close to being meaningless. So much of the drama is internal and requires the actors to really sell it. Thankfully, Winslet and Fiennes are tremendous salesmen. Two of our finest actors draw us close to these actors and even in the strangest of contexts make The Reader a very moving emotional experience.

Several minutes into The Reader I was ready to pan it. By the end, Kate Winslet had revealed so much of herself, and Ralph Fiennes had shown such stunning sensitivity, I was completely turned around. Never underestimate the power of actors. Their ability to fix even the most troubling of internal drama is mind-blowing. The Reader is awkward and discomfiting; with scenes of a sexual nature that will put off many more skittish audience members. It's also a heart rending, human drama featuring fine performances from Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes for whom I say, the movie is a must see.