Review of Vanilla Sky (2001) by Bart & — 12 Nov 2010

The quest for identity and love.

Tom Cruise gives a strong performance as the seemingly unstable David who believes he is having a casual affair with Julie (Cameron Diaz) while attracted to his best friend's love interest, Sophia (Penelope Cruz).

Heartbroken and desperate Julie commits suicide by driving her car over a bridge with David inside of it. Consequently, Aames is disfigured and his life comes falling apart as he falls into a deep depression as he loses the three things that made his life a dream: his good looks, the company left to him by his father and the woman he loves.

While we are supposed to believe that his mental crisis is abetted by the symptoms of his injuries, it's hard not to believe that David's depressed as the events described above are told to us from prison where a police shrink (Kurt Russell) evaluates David while he awaits a trial for murder. We know early on that he is supposed to have murdered someone, but for the first two thirds of the film, we are not sure exactly who. Until we learn more about this murder, it is fairly easy to take the narrative at face value. But when the shrink starts dragging more memories out of the reluctant David, we discover that not all of what we have seen makes sense. As strange as this film was, I just couldn't look away. Something about it kept pulling me in further and further until I was as utterly confused and frustrated as Tom Cruise's David Aames as he tried to figure out just what the hell was going on.

Replete with plot turns and unexpected developments, there was no way to know what to expect as Vanilla Sky challenges the viewer to figure out what is real and what is not.