Featured Movies
Partners
Vanilla Sky
A stylish, thought-provoking drama that incorporates elements of romance, mystery and science fiction
Alejandro Amen??bar's 1999 Spanish film Open Your Eyes (aka Abre Los Ojos) was a stylish, ideas packed but flawed film that unravelled with its climactic exposition. Cameron Crowe's $70 million remake is similarly stylish, packed with (second-hand) ideas and flawed. But it also has an added problem, the presence of producer-star Tom Cruise. Cruise stars as David Aames, a disgustingly rich, supremely smug, roundly arrogant ("I don't care if God calls - I'm very, very busy") 33-year-old head of a publishing company (which he inherited). He's got a swanky apartment and a compliant "fuck-buddy" in the form of Cameron Diaz's doting Julie Gianni. He's never known true love, but this changes when his friend Brian (Crowe and Kevin Smith regular Lee) arrives at David's birthday party with "the last guileless girl in New York", Sofia (Cruz, reprising her role from Open Your Eyes and struggling to act through her accent). However, after one blissful but chaste night together, David accepts a lift from Julie who, mad with jealousy, freaks and drives her car off a bridge. We learn more as David, wearing a Halloween-style mask (or "facial prosthetic") recounts the story to psychologist Dr McCabe (Russell) in prison. David was left severely facially scarred, and has apparently committed a murder. The plot gets increasingly convoluted as it flips back and forth between their conversations and David's post-accident life, dipping in and out of dreams as it goes. It's not the film's complex narrative that is its biggest problem though. If your attention levels are suited to popcorn movies, the film may confuse. But if you've seen the original or pay attention it won't be a problem. And although some of its themes are a bit dated (especially in a world that's already seen Open Your Eyes and The Matrix), this good-looking film is far from uninteresting, throwing in musings about love, the potential and dangers of technology, and the nature of reality. The chief problem is with Cruise himself, not only does he cruise (sorry) through the role on his charms, he's so much the star and the focus that his presence overwhelms. It's a confused presence too - are we supposed to feel for this schmuck, are we supposed to root for his redemption? At least in the original, the equivalent character was drawn more clearly. Anyway, the film frequently refers to or alights on his face - whole and smirkily handsome, horribly scarred or masked. The character of David is defined though his face. Isn't there something profoundly vain about a star making a movie about his face? Verdict The dictionary definition of "movie Marmite". |
