SPOILERS DEAD AHEAD! BEWARE!

Considering how this flick ‘Awake’ was consensually lambasted by the American Film Critics of America imagine my surprise at how reasonably entertained I was by this flick. I’m sure in some way lowered expectations probably played a part in this, but whatever, I don’t feel like I wasted my time watching this thing.

Hayden Christensen is Clay Beresford, just average everyday incredibly rich, handsome, well dressed, well spoken dude with a bum ticker. Which makes Clay’s life even mo betta than ours is the fact that his fiancé is named Sam Lockwood and looks exactly like Jessica Alba. If I was this cats doctor I probably would advised him to get a slightly less hot girlfriend because I’m pretty certain that being in possession of a bad heart and having sex with Jessica Alba on the regular can’t be a good combination. But truthfully though, Clay’s heart is really messed up which has his loving and loyal mother Lilith (Lena Olin) super concerned and Clay is in real desperate need for a transplant. The problem is that Clay has a very rare blood type and though he’s high on the donor list, nobody with his blood type seems too interested in dying to help a brother out.

Not to worry though because Clay’s best friend on the entire earth is his cardiac surgeon Dr. Jack Harper (Terrence Howard) who saved Clay’s life when he was rushed into Emergency some years ago and the pair have been fast friends ever since. The only trouble with Clay’s personal life is that even though he has this SMOKING fiancé his mom can’t know about it because she’s so over protective of her little boy, especially since the tragic death, almost comical (in my opinion) death of his dad when little Clay was just a lower case millionaire. This is also complicated by the fact that Girlfriend Sam is mother Lilith’s personal assistant and she will surely go ballistic if she

were to find out about this Jezebel dating her baby boy. Sam isn’t too happy about this love undercover situation, and eventually she’s had enough of the side stepping which forces Clay to confront his mother about his one true love and come face to face with his true feelings resulting is a quick and sudden marriage of young beautiful people.

No sooner than the pair says ‘I Do’ does the call come that a heart is available. Peculiar one would think but regardless it’s on to hospital where Dr. Harper and his team place Clay under anesthesia for the transplant. The problem is that Clay is wide freaking awake and is feeling and hearing everything. And we mean EVERYTHING. Particularly that part about Jack and them plotting to kill him for his money and having him expire on the operating table. It’s not looking good for my man, but fortunately he has his new hot wife watching his back. Oh Damn.

As a thriller ‘Awake’ worked for me. Hayden Christensen gives a solid if simple performance as Clay and Jessica Alba Dark was also very effective. Terence Howard is probably the best working actor under the age of forty and gives yet another fine performance as the evil, or not so evil doctor doing some seriously evil stuff. Virgin director Joby Harrold solidly guides a movie that is relatively brief in its running time and he makes the best use of the little time he was given, trimming his film of all its superfluous fat and keeping it moving at good pace which in turn kept my attention focused on the screen and interested in what was going on in front of me.

However, despite that fact that I was ultimately entertained by ‘Awake’ this doesn’t take away from its numerous suspect moments. Sure Terence Howard is my mans friend and all but Mom has found the greatest heart surgeon in the history of the Earth, the next Surgeon General of the United States of America to perform this phenomenally complex procedure and Hayden tells mom, ‘I trust my guy’. Whatever. I’m afraid ‘My Guy’ is going to have to understand that I’m going with the Surgeon God on this one. You would think mom would have run a background check on her new super-hot personal assistant which would have solve all kinds of problems. I like the scene where Clay is talking to Sam on the phone in front of the hospital but has to ignore her as he passes by her because Mom is also outside the hospital waiting for baby boy in a limo. You would think Mom would have noticed her son completely ignoring her personal assistant who he just walked by close enough to knock her over, but then we didn’t know she was his personal assistant at this point. If a person takes a crap load of drugs to kill themselves then wouldn’t that heart be virtually useless? But I’m no M.D. on that one though. Finally, though there’s more, Clay being ‘Awake’ during his surgery serves absolutely no purpose in this story. They could have called it ‘Asleep’ or ‘One Eye Cocked Open’ and it still would have served the same purpose.

‘Awake’ has an outlandishly spectacularly ridiculous narrative but one that I found well paced and entertaining. This could be because the filmmakers are asking me to believe that would I fall for Jessica Alba falsely pretending to be in love with me while systematically slapping me on the head with cheap nasty free sex, with her ultimate goal being to kill my ass. Well, they got me there because I believed.