MOVIE REVIEWS: AWAKE
Although ordinary moviegoers stayed away from theaters in droves over the weekend, the nation’s film critics returned to them to catch Awake, which was not previously screened for them. The movie concerns a man who undergoes an operation, but remains awake — although paralyzed — throughout. The critics apparently identified with the poor man. Jack Mathews in the New York Daily News warned that audiences “must silently endure agonizing pain and banal operating room dialogue while telling themselves that it will soon be over. Not soon enough in the case of Awake, possibly the worst movie of 2007.” Most other reviews were of a similar nature. But Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times, no stranger, unhappily, to the operating room, pronounced it “a surprisingly effective thriller. I went to a regular theater to see it Friday afternoon, knowing nothing about it except that the buzz was lethal, and sat there completely absorbed.” Indeed, Ebert referred several times in his review to the poor advance reviews of the film that appeared on RottenTomatoes.com and elsewhere. He nevertheless concluded defensively: “But I felt what I felt, and there you have it.”
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