Every year, one in 700 people wake up during surgery. When they planned her husband's murder, they never thought he'd be the one. Such is the tagline for the film Awake which advertised itself as a film that would show what it was like to actually be awake through surgery when the anesthetic didn't quite do its job. Getting to that point in the film was a difficult journey, as they sought to interweave a story that would have depth, but at times it almost seemed to laid out to be intriguing or surprising. The plot from the back of the box states that the story focuses on a man who suffers "anesthetic awareness" and finds himself awake and aware, but paralyzed, during heart surgery. It's almost false advertisement though, because it leads you to believe the film is going to delve into the topic.

Hayden Christensen plays Clay Beresford, a very active businessman who has been trying to find the right way to build upon the work that his father had done before his death. This has left him a very wealthy man at a young age, but viewed from another angle, he is just a kid that has a heart defect which must be given surgery if he wants to survive. The surgery is a necessity for him to keep living, and his mother heavily suggests that they go to one of the best surgeons in the country to help with the procedure, and the man actually happens to also be the man who pioneered the procedure. Unfortunately, Clay has his mind set on letting his friend, a surgeon at the local hospital, perform it on him because he trusts the man. You can see through the story right away, but we keep tuned in hoping that there is going to be a bigger twist about what is going to happen during the surgery.

As we get led up to the surgery, back-stories are slowly revealed about how Clay got to meet his doctor friend and his current girlfriend Sam Lockwood. Sam was his mothers assistant when they first met, and after hooking up, he ended up proposing to her before they were set to go into surgery. His mother has been kept in the dark about this relationship, and in fact she has been kept in the dark about a lot, even though she really has Clay's best interests at heart. All of the sub-stories don't raise the level of interest in the film, but do provide some story as to what is about to happen when Clay does finally go under the knife. It's not a surprise when, while Clay is in the surgery, that the anesthesia does not work correctly, and Clay is left awake to feel everything taking place in the surgery. It is a miracle that he didn't die from the shock and trauma alone of this experience.

It seemed that the title of the film got lost in the story, because almost no time is spent focusing on why he is awake or the results of him being awake during the surgery. It is instead used only as a way to have Hayden Christensen be the narrator, a role which he wasn't very good at, simply because he doesn't have the right dramatic voice to draw you into the story. The stress of the story is whether Clay is going to survive the surgery, and while the supporting acting job of Terrence Howard as one of the surgeons was done well, the acting accolades end there. Lena Olin as Clay's mother has her moments, but Christensen and Alba just aren't very good in their parts, and the story takes its own suspense and turns that against the characters. This leaves an empty feeling with the film, because something is missing during the entire presentation: the heart. I didn't find the film entertaining, and would have liked more time spent on the fact that he was awake, and why exactly that can happen. Not enough drama, and no memorable moments cause the film to lose a lot of points for me, dragging it down to "not-recommended land."






Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: DVD