David Aames, as played by Tom Cruise, is a fab-looking guy used to having things go his way. We first see him admiring himself in the mirror and tweezing a lone gray hair as Radiohead’s electro-hymn “Everything in Its Right Place” plays over the soundtrack.
Soon he’s hitting every green light on the fastest drive ever from Manhattan’s Upper West Side into an empty Times Square, and though that trip turns out to be one of the many dreams interconnected with the reality of “Vanilla Sky,” his so-called real life doesn’t always play out much differently.
David’s best friend, Brian Shelby (Jason Lee), is resigned to the fact that while he is taking the long way up life’s mountain, David always seems to know the shortcut. “You will never know the exquisite pain of the guy who goes home alone,” a rueful Brian tells David after David has stolen Brian’s date.
A rich kid who inherited the editorship of a Maxim-like men’s magazine when his parents were killed by a drunken driver, David thinks nothing of showing up late for an important board meeting so he can play racquetball with Brian. David’s apartment boasts a Hard Rock Cafe’s worth of cultural artifacts, such as a hologram of jazz legend John Coltrane playing his saxophone, posters of Francois Truffaut’s “Jules et Jim” and Jean-Luc Godard’s “Breathless,” and paintings by Monet and Joni Mitchell.
The idea — actually writer and director Cameron Crowe’s most significant addition to the 1998 Spanish film he is remaking here, Alejandro Amenabar’s “Abre Los Ojos [Open Your Eyes]” — is that David is somehow defined by the pop-culture he has absorbed in his 30-plus years.
But these character traits never really gel to create a relatable person. Is someone who gets his notions about romance from such personal works as “The Freewheeling Bob Dylan” and “Jules et Jim” likely to be the spoiled, thoughtless, narcissistic editor of a trashy men’s magazine, someone who never has suffered failed love?
Crowe’s greatest strength as a filmmaker up to this point has been his ability to achieve deep sympathy with his characters and to give them dialogue that articulates what’s in their hearts. When you watch “Say Anything,” you know John Cusack’s Lloyd Dobler. Cruise’s title character of “Jerry Maguire” and his foil, Cuba Gooding Jr.’s Rod Tidwell, are three-dimensional people whose contradictions make them all the more human.
In “Almost Famous,” everyone from the leads to the bit players feels specific; these are people who truly are, in large part, shaped by the music they love.
As conceived, this film’s David lacks those characters’ soul. His cultural influences, like the paraphernalia in his apartment, feel more like accessories, qualities perhaps less organic to him than to Crowe. (“Vanilla Sky” and the autobiographical “Almost Famous” include references to the father figure of “To Kill a Mockingbird.”) The more you know David, the more you’re likely to wonder, “Who is this guy?”
“Vanilla Sky,” thus, is Crowe’s chilliest movie. In part this is by design; like “Open Your Eyes,” to which Crowe is mostly faithful, “Vanilla Sky” is a head trip that merges thriller, romance and science-fiction elements while playing with our notions of dreams and reality.
That Crowe’s stretching himself as a filmmaker is a positive development. With the help of cinematographer John Toll (“The Thin Red Line,” “Almost Famous”), Crowe achieves some striking visual and mood effects unlike in any of his previous films, such as an almost endless glass elevator ride up a Manhattan skyscraper that enhances the celestial feeling of the cosmic climax.
But the pacing is awfully slack for a story driven by tension (the running time is a fat two hours and 15 minutes), and you’re usually too busy reacting to the plot jackknifes and trying to get a handle on the characters to connect on an emotional level.
David has been conducting an off-and-on fling with the fetching but flighty Julie Gianni (Cameron Diaz), who considers their trysts less casual than he does. After David meets and immediately falls for the Spanish beauty Sofia Serrano (Penelope Cruz), he tempts fate by getting into a car driven by the insanely jealous Julie. Soon his pristine face is marred by grotesque scars, though they’re far less monster-movie-like than those in “Open Your Eyes.”
Following the previous film’s structure, the narrative here is fractured; David, suddenly in prison and hidden behind a latex mask, provides a muffled voiceover for some scenes as he relates his story to a psychiatrist named McCabe (Kurt Russell). At other times you’re not sure whether David could, in fact, open his eyes to a new state of reality. Such mind games work best when your heart is fully engaged, but even the love story isn’t quite realized. Although the point is that David experiences true love for the first time with Sofia, we’re not sure he doesn’t just see her as another precious acquisition.
Cruz is reprising her role from “Open Your Eyes,” but less was required of her in the former film and she seems more relaxed in her native tongue. This Sofia role is underwritten and, as is often the case in her English-language parts, the actress lends her an introverted energy. You can see why David would be charmed by her, but their first night together lacks the required love-for-the-ages vibe.
Cruise, a producer on the film, logically chose himself to play David, the ultimate of the actor’s cocksure characters who get knocked down several pegs. You can’t help but be struck by seeing the star’s iconic looks marred to such a degree, and Cruise, to his credit, doesn’t make a big show out of the affliction. Still, the performance is notable more for its moments — David’s eruption at doctors encouraging him to wear a mask, the searing anguish of some later scenes — than the character’s overall coherence.
Russell provides the sympathetic probing that is required of him, and Lee, as usual, provides appealing energy, though he must be tiring of these resentful-second-banana roles. Diaz makes a strong impression in her few scenes, but then there’s something familiar about Julie.
If David’s such a pop-culture sponge, hasn’t he seen “Fatal Attraction” and thus learned that having casual sex with clingy, psycho blondes is a bad idea? When Julie shows up uninvited at David’s birthday party, you half expect her to declare, “I’m not going to be ignored.”
Yet David can’t resist pushing his luck and thus learns a lesson that’s far more revelatory to him than it’s likely to be to much of the audience. You don’t expect this time-, reality- and brain-warping material to be at the service of such a conventional morality tale, but so be it.
Still, there’s too much intelligence at work here to be dismissed, from Amenabar’s clever conception to Crowe’s vivid dialogue; I especially liked it when David presses Sofia to reveal a secret, and she replies, “I’ll tell you in another life when we are both cats.”
If Crowe is looking for a sequel idea that really would blow minds, there it is.
`Vanilla Sky’
(star)(star)1/2
Written and directed by Cameron Crowe; based on the film “Abre Los Ojos [Open Your Eyes],” written by Alejandro Amenabar and Mateo Gil, photographed by John Toll; edited by Joe Hutshing; production designed by Catherine Hardwicke; music by Nancy Wilson; produced by Tom Cruise, Paula Wagner and Crowe. A Paramount Pictures release; opens Friday. Running time: 2:15. MPAA rating: R (sexuality, strong language).
David Aames …………… Tom Cruise
Sofia Serrano …………. Penelope Cruz
McCabe ……………….. Kurt Russell
Brian Shelby ………….. Jason Lee
Edmund Ventura ………… Noah Taylor
Julie Gianni ………….. Cameron Diaz
