Awakenings

Rating: 7/10 (13 March 2005)

What is a line between dream and reality? Can we see dreams, believing them to be real? And if so, can we awake in a dream to figure out, that all around us is just an illusion, cleverly constructed by our sub conscious?
Those couple questions sprung in my mind after I watched Vanilla Sky. It's rather interesting movie really, but it does have very poorly written and boring beginning as a romantic drama starring Tom Cruise and Penelope Cruz. Story it self turns good after the car crash. Then it really starts to examine reality if David Aames (Tomi Cruise), who gets his face mashed up, but who still manages to find love of Sofia Serrano (Cruz).
Cruz is great as she always is. You just gotta love that accent. Other actress deserving praise is Cameron Diaz, who play Julianne Gianni, a occasional lady friend of David. She was amazing in that part.
Tom Cruise became good actor after he made "Eyes Wide Shut" for Stanley Kubrick. That was the movie, which proved, that Cruise can act besides just being a pretty boy. That was just to say, that Cruise does helluva good role as Aames in Vanilla Sky. Could say, that he manages to keep the movie in surface.
Oh, and Kurt Russel does nice job as Aames's psychiatrist McCabe.
Now to the weak points of the movie. As I said it is partly very weakly written, especially the beginning, which is just boring and mundane. Then there is the direction of Cameron Crowe. He honestly isn't that great. He's not bad, but there are several moments in the film that could do some tightening up, I refer on the beginning here.
Overall a decent movie. Above average.