Hmm...

Rating: 5/10 (22 November 2004)

When a film starts how Vanilla Sky does, a dream sequence followed by a relatively routine day of what seems like the 'typical Tom Cruise character', then out of the blue we cut to Cruise being interrogated about a murder, some strange mask covering his face... I generally sit up and take notice!
Unfortunately somewhere a little bit down the track it goes a bit astray - can't really pinpoint one exact scene or moment when it happens, but for some reason I started caring less and less what was going to happen.
A big part of it is the heavy-handedness - it's over-long and certain scenes are dragged out to painful lengths. The music is pretty good (Radiohead's 'Everything In Its Right Place' is perfect for the opening scene) but overused - it seems that every minute there's another song playing. I know Crowe likes music but try to keep it subtle.
The cast does a good enough job, but I think Cruise has it tough - he's just not convincing enough, he's kind of playing himself half the time, then hamming it up the rest of the time. Diaz, Cruz and Russell are OK, I like Lee but the part's not right for him. And Noah Taylor is almost the downfall of the entire film for me. He was just so stilted, but his character was so important to the last twenty minutes or so, he made me want to switch it off. Then again I was losing interest by then.
Basically, there's more twists here than I can readily recall in any film - enough to keep you vaguely entertained for 136 minutes. But at the end I wondered whether it was really all worth it. I haven't seen the original but I imagine it's better, well at least more succinct at about 20 minutes shorter.
It's certainly interesting, but ultimately long-winded and clunky...