Dir. Joby Harold, US, 2007, 84 mins
Cast: Hayden Christensen, Jessica Alba, Terrence Howard, Lena Olin
Review by Jean Lynch
There’s some inspired casting here with Christensen, whose acting has often been compared to the material a carpenter might use, portraying a man who is paralysed but conscious, and unable to communicate whilst undergoing a heart transplant. Fortunately, he deflects the obvious pot shots because he is actually pretty good, despite a slightly shaky start. He plays Clayton Beresford, a very rich young man, having inherited a vast business empire from his father, who died when Clay was very small, falling over the bannisters whilst dressed as Santa Claus. Blocking out the memory, Clay’s ally has been Lilith, his mother (Olin), a somewhat overbearing matriarch – so much so that fearless in business Clay has put off for over a year the fact that he has been dating and is now engaged to Sam (Alba), his mother’s assistant, who takes him places he’s never been before – like the subway and Brooklyn.
However, Lilith’s claustrophic caring is perhaps understandable given the fact that her beloved son has a serious health problem. On the waiting list for a heart transplant, Clay is also of a rare blood type and will have to wait even longer than most. So, not in possession of the two things that money can’t buy, Clay is given some wise advice from his friend and doctor, Jack (Howard) – ‘tell your mother, marry the girl and live your life. You may not have much of it left.’ Trusting him implicitly, Clay duly does as he’s told, with a quickie romantic wedding organised in the dead of night, with Jack joyfully on hand to take the pictures. In what turns out to be ‘quite a night’, the marriage is barely consummated when Clay gets the call he’s been waiting for. Despite having practically disowned him for carrying on with Sam, Lilith joins them at the hospital, with both moral support and the country’s top surgeon in tow. Standing his ground, Clay insists that it’s Jack he most trusts with his life.
With his wife and mother tentatively coming to terms with each other in the waiting room, Clay is prepared for his life-saving surgery, counting backwards from ten as he goes under the general anaesthetic. Most people don’t get beyond eight but Clay finds that he’s still fully conscious but paralysed even as they begin to make the first cut. Unaware of this, the team of surgeons talk freely – and what they have to say means this is just the very start of Clay’s worries...
Awake is most certainly not for the squeamish. There are the odd graphic shots of the surgery itself, plus the real-life phenomenon of ‘anaesthesia awareness’, as suffered by Clay, must surely be the modern-day equivalent of the premature burial, the ultimate horror of being buried alive. But, in this case, with severe pain thrown in for added measure. However, if you can stomach it, Awake is a terrific thriller, full of cleverly structured twists, and nicely paced, mounting suspense. The way in which Clay leaves his body and encounters key scenes from his past is well-handled too, atmospheric and surreal. With the theme, but more so with the feel of these scenes, one is put in mind of similar moments in the film Flatliners, sharing that otherworldy, slightly eery, nightmarish quality.
Jessica Alba fully plays to her strengths as Sam, all sugary sweetness coating something much darker, while Olin’s character requires her to take the audience on a journey, seeing her from one perspective and then another. Howard, meanwhile, wants the audience to be sympathetic to him throughout, even if he might not be all that he initially seems. It is this confounding of expectations that come fast and furious in the second half that really makes the heart rate soar.
There are plot holes, and some of the motives for what’s happening are a little dubious, but overall this story – which could easily have drifted into the ridiculous or imploded in on itself – is in good hands. Awake is a most invigorating tonic.
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