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 enlarge | Director: Joby Harold
Actors: Terrence Howard, Fisher Stevens, Arliss Howard, Hayden Christensen, Sam Robards
Studio: The Weinstein Company
Category: DVD
List Price: $28.95
Buy Used: $2.95
You Save: $26.00 (90%)
New (59) Used (55) Collectible (1) from $2.95
Rating:  41 reviews
Sales Rank: 12018
Format: Ntsc, Subtitled, Widescreen
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Region: 1
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 84 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.3 x 0.6
MPN: WEID81067D
UPC: 796019810678
EAN: 0796019810678
ASIN: B0010X740A
Theatrical Release Date: 2007
Release Date: March 4, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: dvd has marks and wear but plays great,excellent movie with jessica alba,faster shipping, happy holidays.
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| Customer Reviews:
 dead on arrival February 23, 2008
Morgan P Salvo (Bend Oregon)
6 out of 8 found this review helpful
Some movies aren't very good. Some are bad. Some are absolutely wretched. This movie falls into all these categories. Perhaps a new category needs to be created for dredge like this to fall into, and due to its medical theme, let's call it the Euthanasia Bin.
Awake's premise is that a person undergoing surgery has a symptom called Anesthesia Awareness--staying conscious during the procedure. OK, cool, this sets up a decent concept of dread and terror. But there will be none of said dread or terror, just banal plot and supremely stupid dialogue. We wallow in soap opera city and then revisit it again via flashbacks.
Clayton (Hayden Christensen) is a high-powered CEO who can cut super slick cutthroat corporate deals, but can't tell mommy about his fiancé, hot chick Sam (Jessica Alba). The stereotypical fear of living up to good ol' deceased Dad runs absolutely transparently rampant through this disaster. Clayton has a heart condition, rare blood type and a best friend Jack (Terrence Howard) who's a surgeon he fishes with in the East River. Jack is dying to do the surgery, however, Mom (Lena Olin) enlists family friend, (Arliss Howard--usually cool, but wasted in this) the most skilled surgeon on the planet. Family tension and squabbles ensue, plot twists ensue, hell, everything ensues, proving unavoidably irritating due to the unbelievable predictability of the plot twists and the failure to convey any kind of tension.
Case in point: Clayton gets his anesthetic cocktail, and although paralyzed, can still hear and feel. We get to experience his freak out through--surprise--his narration.
And we only get one good operation pain scene. After they crack his ribs open, he seems not to feel anything. I guess he went all mind over matter. Then, Clayton hears while he's on the table that everyone in the operating room is conspiring to kill him with a botched heart transplant. Upset, he "leaves his body" and follows all the characters to unravel the hideous plot against him. So, we get to revisit the boring scenes we already saw, spelling out nothing new. There are torturously unwatchable scenes with mom and Sam in the waiting room exposing horrendously archaic dialogue. As soon as the major plot twists unfold, the story meanders then gets caught up in the soap opera where it began. Meanwhile, the audience has already solved all their problems for them - it's called leaving...leaving the damn theater!
The following is a spoiler (but then how is that possible?): When mom unravels the scheme after her son is pronounced dead (like three times) she kills herself IN THE CAFETERIA so her surgeon can give her son the correct pulsating organ while he's still on the bypass machine. The ultimate schlock is when mom-phantom and son-phantom have a little, shall I say, "heart-to-heart" talk.
This movie sucked on the highest level, not even worthy of straight-to-video status. It's virtually impossible to bring all the flaws to light. Why was this movie made? Why was it released? I am sorely perplexed. So were the other three people in the theater.
Don't make the mistake of thinking that Awake is "so bad it's good." Some movies are at least laughably bad; this one couldn't even do that. If they insist on making movies this horrid why can't they show Jessica Alba naked?
I call these movies "paycheck movies." One wonders why else all these actors would even consider a role in garbage like this.
Help! I'm in a movie theatre and can't leave! I want to yell at the screen STOP! I must be under some new form of Anesthesia Awareness... paralyzed because I had to write a review--No escape! AHHH! Finally it's over! Excuse me while I pick up my wounded formaldehyde-injected brain from the aisle...
 Awake February 18, 2008
NoWireHangers (Sweden)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
I knew nothing about the plot before I watched "Awake". I'm glad I didn't. The movie opens with Clay Beresford on the operating table. A narration by his doctor lets you think you know how the movie will end. The movie then takes a step back in time and shows you, the events leading up to the surgery. It starts out slow but once the story gets back to the operating table, where Clay experiences an "anesthetic awareness" (he seems to be unconscious but is only paralyzed and can hear everything), the movie gets really interesting and the twists keep coming. And with a running time of less than 85 minutes the pace never slows down. It is also helped by a good cast, especially Lena Olin and Terrence Howard.
A little strange but OK.. February 17, 2008
K. W. Bennink (Netherlands)
Right from the start you think you know how it'll end (they show you), which makes you blink and think "what's the point of watching then?" but there are a few 'little' details they don't show/tell right away.
I found the story a little too unlikely - if they left a few twists out it would have been more believable - but at least there was a decent story there. And best of all, a great cast. It starts off at a normal pace but it feels a little rushed at the end.
I liked how it unraveled, but overall it wasn't an extremely impressive movie, so I'm giving it three stars.
Righteously rated R by the way.
 A brainless thriller February 6, 2008
Tristan
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
As I read some reviews of people and critics who enjoyed Awake, I noticed lines in many of them that was somewhere along the lines of "filled with twist after twist and shock after shock that you do not see coming".
Awake will be an enjoyable film if you miss obvious clues and cliques that reveal the whole twist and end. I normally am never able to figure out endings or plot twists, but I surprised myself by easily figuring out the major twist after five minutes into the film. There is a common movie rule of focusing on something that seems irrelevant at the time, to bring it back in the end to surprise you. Here, however, I felt it was so obvious the filmmakers almost want you to figure it out. I started hoping I was wrong, that there would be some unexpected "shocks and twists", but alas I was not.
Hayden Christensen plays Clay Beresford the son of a billionaire widow (played by Lena Olin). He has a weak heart and has been on the transplant donors list for a year. He is also secretly engaged to his mother's house assistant, Sam Lockwood (played by Jessica Alba). The night he gets married to her he also gets the donors call. From this point everything starts going wrong, starting with Clay waking up from an overdose of anesthetic, but being paralyzed to move or say anything. This is apparently something that happens to one in every seven hundred surgeries a year. Well while awake he feels all the pain of his chest being sawed open and also hears the doctors discussing their plan to kill him. From then on it is a thriller that has a moderate intensity, but you find out things rather quickly and early despite it coming to a swift conclusion.
All the performances were good, Lena Olin giving an excellent performance. It was entertaining, and until I found out that I was correct in my speculations of the end, it held my attention. Overall it was mildly entertaining thriller with good performances that you will enjoy if you don't figure out the twist before it comes.
Unaware December 1, 2007
MICHAEL ACUNA (Southern California United States)
5 out of 11 found this review helpful
"Awake" is a case of both lost or more to the point squandered opportunites and of the moviemaker (writer/director Joby Harrold) not having enough confidence in his story to believe in the inherent dramatic qualities contained therein.
"Awake" tells the story of Clay Beresford (the always bland and hapless Hayden Christensen) who goes into the hospital for a heart transplant but unfortunately suffers "anesthetic awareness" and finds himself awake and aware, but paralyzed, during the surgery. This is in itself terrifying enough and certainly rife with dramatic possibilities but unfortunately director Harrold cannot leave well enough alone and concocts a ridiculous surrounding story that cheapens and makes laughable the basic story of Clay's helplessness and terror during his surgery.
Attempting to do their best despite the tawdry circumstances are Jessica Alba (as bodacious and sweet as always) as Clay's lover, Lena Olin (forceful, humane) as Clay's mother and the usually thoughtful and powerful Terrence Howard (cast adrift in a sea of melodramatic sludge) as Clay's surgeon and friend.
It's too easy to say that "Awake" is asleep because it is worse than that: "Awake" is without life, buried in a grave of bad decisions and decayed thought.
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