Sleeper

Rating: Null/10 (1 March 2003)

SPOILERS.
All of the movie is, like Gaul, divided into three parts. (1) Handsome, young, wealthy, powerful Tom Cruise crosses his blonde temporary squeeze and takes up with a darker more viable squeeze. In doing so he betrays his friend. He's also involved in a tug of war with the board of directors for control of his company. A love story. (2) Handsome etc. Cruise is involved in an accident in which his face is disfigured and he degrades himself by being drunk and hiding from the world and engaging in first-degree self pity. Strange things begin happening to him because of the various metal items in his partially reconstructed face. (3) There follows the unraveling of a mystery in a sci fi setting, rather like "Total Recall."
You have to feel sorry for the hero. I mean here he is, in all his Tom Cruiseness, stalked by a blonde (with whom he can make love four times in one night yet). It doesn't help that the rejected stalker is played by the stultifyingly charming and beautiful Cameron Diaz. You can tell this is a guy who's used to getting what he wants -- and exactly what he wants. The other babe is no slouch either. It's Penelope Cruz in long, silky black hair, with an enchanting mole on her sternum, a voice like a non-smoking Victoria Golena, and a striking elfin presence, along the lines of Maria Bartiromo. He deserves to get his face smashed, just for having it so good!
He's kind of his usual cocky self at the beginning, and why shouldn't he be cocky? He can not only pick between blonde and brunette but he can hump his best friend and not feel guilty too. But then things begin to get a little twisted. His face is so banged up that his appeal is called into question. We begin to wonder if this is going to turn into another one of those movies in which a disabled person has to learn to overcome his disability or at least his feelings of self disgust. Then things get even more twisted. He's goes to bed with Penelope and wakes up to find Cameron next to him. (Either way would be okay for most of us. Both of them together and all men could make love four times a night, or even five or ten.) He's cured of that disfigured visage. But then he looks in a mirror and it's back! When he's in a bar with his best friend and the guy jokes that his newly renewed face is splitting a seam, we're as scared as Cruise. There's another scene in a bar later in which some guy with a Brit accent informs Cruise that everything happening to him is his own invention, that he can make anyone do whatever he wants. Cruise shouts that all he wants right now is for everyone to shut up. They obligingly do so. Is he on acid? Is he nuts. Is he going through something like the guy who was hanged at Owl Creek Bridge? What's up? There has so far been a kind of framing story in which Cruise, wearing a regnerative prosthetic mask, is trying to figure this all out with a psychologist in prison. It seems he, Cruise, has murdered someone. Fragments of the act return. Yes, he murders Cameron, but no, it's Penelope, as we can tell from that succulent nevis on her chest.
Well, folks, the ending will clear things up for you. But, I must say, the resolution sits kind of uncomfortably on top of what's gone on before, incongruously, like a fool's cap on a seal's head. It's pretty much out of the Twilight Zone. By this time the viewer is as delirious as the hero. But that's not quite the right word. Delirious is from de liro -- "I rave" -- but what we have here is dreaming, not raving, even though the dream is supposed to be pleasant instead of warped into a nightmare by the guilt Cruise carries around in his subconscious.
It's an interesting movie if you can accept the disjointed plot and get past those somewhat grinding shifts of gear. The acting could hardly be improved on. Cameron Diaz has the face, and the ability, to switch from helpless devotion to something more sinister. I've only seen one other film with Penelope Cruz, a quite different part, but she is immensely appealing here, always cheerfully in control of what's going on around her, knowledgeable beyond any expectable point about herself and the people around her. She's fine. And Tom Cruise has never given a better performance. As an actor maybe he has a tendency to smile and laugh too much. In this case, his smiles and laughter assume heavily ironic tones. There is a scene in which Diaz tries to talk him into taking a ride with her, just after he's left Cruz's apartment. It gives him a chance to display his range as a performer and he handles it very well. When Diaz first calls to him that smirky grin appears and he says, "You're following me." Her entreaties become more serious and personal, and watch his expression and hear his voice change to one that suggests -- not exactly personal injury -- but the closing of a door.
The direction is well done too, considering the challenges that needed to be met to put such a story line across. And the photography is outstanding. Vanilla skies indeed.
I recommend seeing this, but fasten your seatbelts. It's not a conventional love story, a conventional self-discovery movie, a conventional mystery, or a conventional science fiction story, although it's a little of all of these.