A lot of thrillers these days build themselves around the premise of the lead character being tortured with incredible pain, but no means to escape. Awake stands out amongst the lot in two major ways. The first is that it is somewhat more plausible and realistic than the others, in that the victim here is a patient putting his life in the hands of some shady doctors during a surgical procedure, and that there are no masked villains with multi-million dollar torture palaces under their home. The second is that it is actually character-driven, and not entirely about torture. First time writer-director Joby Harold shows a gift for effective premises and creating a tense psychological atmosphere. Where he needs improvement is in simplifying his plot, and in casting his lead characters.

The film centers on a young millionaire named Clay Beresford (Hayden Christensen). Clay is one of the most financially successful businessmen in New York, but he is constantly living under the shadow of the father who he inherited the business from, and whom he barely remembers, since he died at Christmas when Clay was very young. His overly protective and somewhat domineering mother (Lena Olin) has kept Clay on a short chain most of his life. She genuinely cares for him, but is afraid to let him go, since her son was born with a weak heart and he requires a very risky heart transplant operation. A donor has been found, and Clay wants to go against his mother's wishes, and have the operation performed by a doctor friend named Jack Harper (Terrence Howard). Jack does have a history of malpractice suits, but Clay trusts Jack, because they are friends, and he did save Clay's life once when he had heart complications the year before. This is not the only way Clay is deceiving his mother. He's been involved in a secret relationship with his mother's personal secretary, Sam Lockwood (Jessica Alba), and has already proposed to her. He's been forced to keep the relationship secret, and Sam is quickly growing frustrated. Clay wants to be his own man, no longer living in the shadow of his family name, and has decided to make his own decisions by marrying Sam in a last minute ceremony and letting Jack perform the heart transplant.

Anyone who has seen the ad campaign for this film already knows that Clay will grow to regret one of these decisions. The anesthetic is applied as it should be before the operation begins, and although Clay is put into a sleep-like state, he is still conscious of his surroundings. He can hear everything the doctors are saying, and he can feel the pain as they begin to cut him open, but he cannot move, speak, or do anything to alert those around him that he is aware of what's going on. The movie is clever in how it depicts the character in this state. We get an internal monologue as Clay lies on the operating table, wondering why he can still hear the doctors talking, and wondering if he's supposed to be feeling this incredible pain as they start to make their incisions. He tries to distract himself with memories of Sam, but other thoughts start to creep in there as well, things he doesn't want to think about. I'll have to be careful here not to go into spoiler territory, but I will say that Clay begins to hear the doctors, including his trusted friend Jack, talking about things that no one wants to hear their doctor talking about while performing surgery. A lot of things are not what they seem, and the movie turns into somewhat of a mystery as the clues pile up, and Clay races through his thoughts and memories trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together. The subplots pile up, more and more twists are thrown at us, and although the movie remains enjoyable, I started to feel a bit let down that writer-director Harold didn't have enough faith in his initial terrifying and much more simpler premise.

Awake is a movie that works thanks to its initial premise, and some creative ways that it gets around some obvious roadblocks. After all, it wouldn't be very interesting if we were just watching a man on an operating table for the hour or so that the movie covers the process (the movie itself is roughly an hour and a half long). We follow Clay in his mind, where he is free to roam around, and revisit past memories and jumps from one moment to the next, piecing together the information from what he hears the doctors saying about how he wound up in his current mess. The movie is at its most effective when it is dealing with the basic primal fear its simple premise provides. The movie informs us in subtitles right at the beginning that a small percentage of people remain in a conscious state during surgery, and that they remember everything that happened during the procedure. Anyone who has ever had surgery can imagine how terrifying this could be, and the movie does a great job in tapping into that fear with the monologue aspect, and taking us inside the mind of the character. The movie also does a great job unsettling us just by showing us the procedure itself. Anyone squeamish about blood or viewing operating procedures would be wise to pick a different viewing choice, as the movie does go into some detail in the heart transplant process. That being said, I do have to question the fact that so few doctors and nurses would be assigned to someone like Clay. Considering that this guy is a powerful and young tycoon, you'd think the hospital would be surrounding this guy with the best available, instead of three individuals with a history of malpractice. You'd also think the media would be breaking down the door for information.

Its only when the movie starts overstuffing itself with plot that things falter just a little. We've got shady characters, double crosses, more plot revelations to throw us off track than a movie of this type would ever need, forgotten pasts, shady dealings, and a dead guy in a Santa Claus outfit all coming into play. The only thing that keeps the film running is that it constantly knows how to hold our attention, and it keeps on managing to go back to the stuff that works. The scenes in the operating room and inside Clay's head are done so well, I started to wonder why we needed all that other stuff. I think Awake would have been better served as a short film, where it could concentrate on its single strongest suit, and cut out all the mystery filler. Even so, some recasting would need to be done. Although neither of the lead actors are necessarily bad, both Hayden Christensen and Jessica Alba are not as convincing as they should be. Christensen is somewhat dry and wooden in his early scenes, and although he does eventually do a good job of bringing across his panic and pain (the man sure can scream), his more quiet and emotional scenes with either Sam or his mother are lacking something. Alba has always been known more for her looks than her acting ability, and she definitely seems to at least be trying here. She's still hard to buy, especially when some later plot twists put her character into a completely different light that Alba does not seem comfortable with. She's good early on, but she seems to be stretching it during her later scenes. The main stand out is Lena Olin, who does a good job with her tricky character, who must be controlling and unflinching, but also sympathetic so that we can believe in the choices she makes late in the film.
I'm recommending Awake, based mainly on the genuine tension it manages to create during most of its running time. It held my interest, even when the movie started overstuffing itself, and it's well made enough for me to say I enjoyed it. The movie was not screened for critics, but it is nowhere near the turkey that would usually imply. Maybe the studio didn't have enough faith in the project, which is too bad, as the movie is nowhere near being so flawed that it deserves to be buried and forgotten. I do feel I should once again stress that you should avoid this movie if you are either turned off by watching surgery, or if you are about to go into surgery yourself. Something tells me this will not be a favorite amongst anyone in the medical profession.

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