Review of Vanilla Sky (2001) by Simon D — 08 May 2015

Crowe is adept at the helm but that's expected. Vanilla Sky finds him in deeper, gorgeously surrealistic swirls of sub-conscious featuring Cruise and Cruz in centre stage, for the majority just making puppy eyes at each other and talking in grossly seductive riddles.

Cruise's protagonist David Ames whines constantly about sub-terranean anonymity and narcissistic oblivity and his character is deeply unlikeable but that's intended, so its not as bad but it makes his "retribution" harder to digest.

Crowe seems committed to doing what he wants to do but he's remaking a film that doesn't need to be remade. Abre Los Ojos ("Open Your Eyes") also featured Penelope Cruz and alot of the shots, expressions and even the costumes are identical which leaves the question, what was the actual point? What was the point of remaking Abre Los Ojos when you brought nothing new to an already over-crowded table.