Carter: ‘Sky’ plot is a bad dream

Geoff Carter

Friday, Dec. 14, 2001 | 9:32 a.m.

I can almost recommend the soundtrack. Cameron Crowe's taste in music is pretty discriminating, and the soundtrack to "Vanilla Sky" is a fine primer of "What's happening now," with tracks by Sigur Ros, Radiohead and Red House Painters. Sadly, two of the best tracks in the film, by Mint Royale and Thievery Corporation, didn't make the soundtrack disc, whereas The Monkees did. Someone woke up sucking a lemon, to paraphrase Thom Yorke.

Crowe wasn't too busy with the soundtrack to direct Tom Cruise through the wearing and foolish film that accompanies the music -- on the contrary, his imprimatur is on every frame, like a boot print. "Vanilla Sky," allegedly a direct remake of Alejandro Amenabar's 1997 "Abre Los Ojos" (I haven't seen the original work), is a dimwitted shaggy-dog epic based in three dubious high concepts:

1. What if life were just a dream?

2. Why must man play God?

3. What if Tom Cruise was ugly?

Cruise plays David Aames, a self-satisfied brat with a cool car, a best friend (a solid Jason Lee), a magnificent apartment, an inherited 51 percent stake in a giant publishing concern and a penchant for changing women like underwear. On his birthday, he dumps Julie (Cameron Diaz) for Sofia (Penelope Cruz, reprising her role from Amenabar's movie). In the process, Aames sets in motion a chain of events that will end with Julie dead, his face disfigured and the audience bored senseless.

Amenabar's film wasn't the first to follow dream logic; he had "Vertigo" and "Brazil" to reference, among others. Crowe has more influences to draw on, all released within the last five years: "Lost Highway," "The Matrix," "Dark City" and "Memento," to name just a few, all depend on events that never happened, characters that never existed before the final reel. In other words, Crowe has at his disposal a double-dozen ways to jerk an audience around, and he uses them all.

Crowe tips the film's "surprise" ending at least a hundred times, each with greater volume. Cruise wakes up from nightmares again and again, and countless dialogue cues all snap into place well before "Vanilla Sky's" disappointing sci-fi denouement. You know something's wrong in Aames' head, but you simply don't care what it is. You only wish 45 minutes could be cut from the process of introspection.

Cruise's grotesque makeup, already gaining praise as a brave acting choice, is really a soft option: How much emoting does he really have to do under a latex mask? "Vanilla Sky's" real victims are the solid performances by Diaz, who hurts so exquisitely that you're happy to see her ruin Cruise's good looks, and by Kurt Russell, whose gently ennobling presence as a psychiatrist ranks with his best work.

It's a shame that Crowe, a reliable filmmaker, chose this story to extend his reach. I was initially thrilled by the picture's opening sequence, a nightmare episode in which Cruise screams himself hoarse in a deserted Times Square. Until Cruise jerks awake it's hard to tell if it's a cry of anguish or victory; at that point, the film could go either way. The Matrix is a hell of a place to be if you don't know kung fu, and Crowe just doesn't have the kick.