Vanilla Sky review

Just as he did in Eyes Wide Shut, Tom Cruise spends a lot of time in Vanilla Sky wandering around in a mask. And just like EWS, his new movie has a lot to do with dreams, altered states and the question of reality. Do these two facts give us any more insight into the mind of the world's most successful movie star: is he now at a stage where he is so fed up with the idea of being trapped behind a beautiful visage that he is trying to convince the world to look at how great an actor he is bemasked? Or could it be that he is trying to evoke an ancient Greek style of appreciation for the characters rather than the players? Or is he signalling an intention to move away from the inexorable crassness of MI:2 into more adult, psychological territory. Whatever the case may be, let's hope his future projects have a little more credibility than this effort.

The film, co-produced by Cruise, is a remake of Alejandro Amenabar's 1997 Spanish language Abre Los Ojos. It's the second time in a year Cruise has worked with the director, as he also had a hand in producing Amenabar's The Others, which should at least gain an Oscar nomination for his ex-wife Nicole Kidman. There probably won't be any Oscars for Vanilla Sky, despite the pedigree of director Cameron Crowe. It tries so hard to be deep, worthy and psychological but the fact of the matter is that it is largely confusing and downright silly.

Cruise plays the role of David Aames, a 33 year-old New Yorker who has everything: incredibly handsome, running a media empire inherited from his late father, rich beyond belief and a magnet for the female of the species. Not exactly a challenging role for Tom, at least until his casual bed partner (they use another phrase in the film) Julie (Cameron Diaz) decides that she is in love with him. By then however, Cruise has met Sofia, a Spanish dance student (Penelope Cruz) and decided that his future may well lie with her. An enraged Julie finds David, takes him on a fateful car journey and the mystery of the film begins.

With his face ruined after the car accident, Cruise has to cope with a new, somewhat unflattering look (think Mel Gibson in May Without a Face), a latex mask that he pops on and off periodically to check what he looks like and intermittent interviews with a criminal psychologist (Kurt Russell) over a crime that he may or may not have been involved in. Pretty soon after the film's opening time it is clear that the director wishes to (over)employ dream sequences and cryptic time shifts, so that we are never completely sure if what we are seeing is actually real or just existing in David's mind.

This would be all very well if the director were David Lynch, someone who has been dealing with surreal mindgames for most of his career. Crowe however, who really is more of a Billy Wilder in style (and constantly admits to the fact), is somewhat out of his depth with this material. We are meant to puzzle over the action and pick up on clues dropped in each scene but it is all a little too disjointed to really care about too much.

Where Crowe does score well is in the cinematography department (mention must be made of DP John Toll): the opening scenes are set in a Times Square dressed up in a similar way to some of the scenes from the Keanu Reeves film The Devil's Advocate and do set the film off on an eerie and uncertain tone. But once the screenplay kicks into overdrive, even the visual beauty can't make up for the fact that this is a frustrating work which is over-ambitious and tries to do too much for its own good.