Why bother?

Rating: 1/10 (15 December 2006)

A remake of Alejandro Amenabar's Abre los Ojos, but this time with a living, breathing mask as a lead. For the dubious advantage of an English sound track, we endure Tom Cruise's soulless performance, as usual, with zero depth. Yes, the character is identified with his persona, but we usually are given some character underneath that to hold our interest. His empty posturing negates any erotic energy that could have been between his character and Cruz or Diaz.
There is an acting exercise that involves using masks to free the actor to enrich his presentation of character by verbal and body language means. Cruise's masking only painfully emphasizes his inadequacy as an actor. Do see the 1997 original Amenabar Open Your Eyes!