Review of Awake (2007) by James S — 30 Jul 2013

Painfully predictable from the off, Awake manages the no mean feat of being painlessly enjoyable too.

It's your typical pretty people thriller (step up Hayden Christiansen and Jessica Alba) in which a wealthy young man finds himself not fully anesthetised on the operating table during his heart transplant and if that was bad enough, the surgeons are planning to kill him too.

Christansen's voice over from on the operating table is badly over the top. It's doubtful that much voice work will be pushed his way in future as Kiefer Sutherland he is not. Plus, he seems to have some sort of out of body experience too which doesn't really gel with what's going on.

These niggles aside though, Awake does feature a good supporting turn from Lena Olin as Hayden's mother and Fisher Stevens as one of the conspiring surgeons.

As previously mentioned, Awake is terribly predictable. The film makers may as well have put cgi arrows in certain scenes pointing to the clues. Can it really be a coincidence that Hayden's heart transplant comes through 5 minutes after he gets married to Jessica Alba? Of course it's not!!

Rather bizarrely, Awake's predictability is one of it's winning features....it compels you to watch to see if you're actually right. The ending becomes a little Scooby Doo with a full announcement of all the clues along the way, just in case someone had missed them, it's difficult to see how though!! Awake ought to be horrendous but a mixture of old fashioned mystery and a slightly novel idea plus some good supporting turns make this a worthwhile watch.