Awake

To start, it is not my intention to bash this movie. But what is the saying? “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”? I think that is it. Anyway, let me not get sidetracked so early. This film flashed a couple of names on the big screen that I was extremely excited to see. Terence Howard shows up as Dr. Jack Harper, a surgeon fallen on hard times. He is very good friends with the son of Lina Olin, playing Lilith Beresford. Following behind these two are Hayden Christenson as Clayton Beresford Jr, and Jessica Alba as Sam Lockwood (the pair are secretly engaged). Conveniently enough, Dr. Harper is also the surgeon that Clay would like to perform his heart surgery.   The first half (that’s right, I said half) of the film centers on the relationship between Clay and Sam, with Clay wrestling with whether to disclose it to his mother. Nearly halfway through, Clay actually ends up on the operating table. Here is where I pose a question. It is the only one that I am going to pose. Please refer back to my very first sentence. Since when does heart transplant surgery consist of only four participants and the patient? Ponder that, Readers. Oh yeah, and he is awake through the whole surgery. He can hear everything and feel everything. I don’t have a medical degree, but I really think the film is stretching it all a little bit thin.   So, final say on Awake: I figured out every single twist. Every one. Some of them I saw from miles away, others only a few feet. But not a single revelation came as a surprise to me. Some were due to a terribly revealing preview and the rest were just plain old predictability. However, I did think that it was an interesting movie. Perhaps because the first half of the movie moved along so leisurely, I had too much time to think and examine. The second half was much quicker and the movie never felt boring. It’s definitely a creepy premise. I say to wait for DVD, and if you can get yourself invited over for a screening at someone else’s house (that way you don’t even have to pay to rent it) then you will break even on entertainment vs. time in your life that you will never recover.Previews I liked:Charlie Wilson’s WarWalk Hard27 Dresses