What is reality?

Rating: 8/10 (15 July 2009)

Before starting to review this film I must say that I have not yet seen the Spanish film on which it is based so can't say whether it does justice to the source material or not. This is one of those films one has to watch more than once to understand as things we learn at the end of the film effect how one views the events earlier on. Often it is impossible to tell if what we are watching is real, a dream or a delusion.
Tom Cruise plays David Aames a yuppie who has inherited his father's publishing empire. He is sleeping with Julie but there is no real relationship in his mind they are just friends who occasionally spend the night together she however believes it means far more than that. At his birthday party David meets Sofia, a beautiful Spanish woman played by Penélope Cruz, he spends some time with her but nothing physical happens. When he sets off for work Julie is there and asks him to get into her car, she then starts raving about how he must love her then crashes her car off a bridge.
Things then start to be fairly strange, one minute David is well and talking to Sofia the next he is seriously disfigured from the accident talking to doctors about how they can help him, at this point all the can offer is a rubber mask which gives him an appearance that is almost like a statue; fairly realistic yet cold and emotionless. He is later told that there is a radical new treatment that will repair his face, he has this and when the mask is removed he is back to his old good looking self. He starts to have nightmares though, sometimes he imagines the disfigurement has returned, other times he thinks that Sofia is in fact Julie. He even believes that he has killed her but isn't certain which one of them. He is taken into custody and his world gets more and more insane, eventually he is taken to a company which specialises in cryogenicly freezing people immediately after they die, here he learns an alarming truth.
Tom Cruise did a great job as David, it is rare to see a good looking major star playing a character which for much of the film is disfigured unless it is the sort of serious film that is angling for awards. Penélope Cruz was also good as Sofia. I'd certainly recommend this to people who like to watch something different and don't mind not understanding everything they see as they see it.