Hayden Christensen is Clay Beresford, a young man who seemingly has the world at his fingertips. He is rich, has a thriving business (I believe it was real estate?), and the love of a beautiful woman, Sam (Jessica Alba). This is not all he has, he also has a bum heart and has been waiting for one to come up on the transplant list, otherwise he is destined to die young. He also has an overprotective mother in Lilith (Lena Olin).
In the slow first act, we find Clay is resentful of his mother's level of involvement in his life. Sam is tired of having to hide their engagement. Lilith believes she is putting her son's best interest first even if he doesn't believe so. The final piece to the puzzle is, malpractice magnet Dr. Jack Harper (Terrence Howard), a cardiologist who has befriended Clay and is his first choice to perform the transplant.
To reveal any more of the plot would ruin the surprises that you may already see coming and who am I to reveal the gymnastics that the script goes through to make sure that everything fits. And fit everything does, even if it is all a little too convenient.
I think my biggest problem is the way the story unfolds. Shortly after establishing the anesthesia awareness it gets dumped for something more akin to the out of body experience of The Invisible. This effectively throws out the cool medical concept. If that isn't bad enough, the final resolution doesn't even involve Christensen at all. How is that for a kicker? As far as the story goes, Christensen's actual involvement ends with his chest getting opened up.
Yes, the story is a letdown. However, there are moments mixed in that are very good. As the climax nears we get an interesting visual cueing impending death that is highly effective. Lena Olin steals the show as Lilith. Her performance is very strong as her motivations are slowly revealed and her character grows exponentially. She delivers so much more than I could have expected. She elevated her game, and by doing so elevated the game of everyone she shares the screen with. In particular, she has some good scenes with Jessica Alba, who gives glimpses of ability. Hayden Christensen, on the other hand, is as bland as ever. Granted, I think the character was supposed to be like this, but there is a difference between being purposefully flat and just having a bland persona and I am not sure that he knows the difference.
The brief 78 minute runtime is filled with pacing issues, two slow on the build up and to fast as it steams towards its resolution. I get the feeling that there is a lot of footage was left on the editing room floor, which furthers the idea that there will be some sort of unrated or extended cut come the DVD release.
Bottomline. No, I cannot recommend this movie, but I can recommend that you give it a shot when it arrives on DVD (which I would not expect to be very long), if for nothing else, Lena Olin's performance. I still find the base concept to be frightening, the problem is the window dressing used to make it palatable as a thriller. It is a fully realized, yet half-baked script that could have used a bit more development.
Not Recommended.
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