Friday, April 04, 2008

AWAKE - a one trick pony

Debutant writer-director Joby Harold constructs a thriller with a fairly obvious plot, even if you haven't seen the trailer. If you have seen the trailer, there's really no point seeing the movie, because the entire plot is given away: fain will you look for further plot twists. If you haven't, I guess you could check this out on DVD: it's probably not worth a trip to the cinema.

The premise is that a man is given a general anaesthetic, but while he looks numb he's actually still awake. As a result, he can hear that the surgeons giving him a heart transplant are actually plotting to kill him. How do you alert the authorities when you're apparently out cold?

Hayden Christensen, Terrence Howard and Jessica Alba do a decent enough job as the victim, his surgeon and his love interest respectively, but the only stand-out performance is from Lena Olin as the victim's mother. It's a pleasure to see her back on the screen.

AWAKE was released in the USA last year and was released in Russia, Portugal, Israel, Turkey, South Korea, Thailand and Spain earlier this year. It is currently on release in the UK and Brazil and opens later in Paril in Singapore and Iceland. It opens in Argentina in May and in Belgium and the Netherlands in September.

No comments:

Post a Comment