O Despertar de um Assassino

I mean why put a full face bandage on a couple cheek scars...

Jonathan Rhys Meyers is a really good actor but he has never fulfilled his potential. He was fantastic in the The Tudors and really good in films like Elvis and Bend it Like Beckham but for one reason or another , he has had some serious personal problems and has resorted to making B movies like Awake and I think it's a crying shame .

Rhys Meyers plays a man who wakes up in a hospital bed with no recollection of who he is, and learns that he's wanted by the police for committing a series of murders.

About an hour into this film there is a scene where two cops are talking to each other and one says - "This whole damn thing is starting to spiral out of control . It's a mess." Well I couldn't put it better myself !

The plot to this film is ridiculous. Without giving anything away , it doesn't take a genius to work out who the bad guy is because , as always , it's the one character that gets introduced to the film in the first quarter , for no reason whatsoever other than to give you the heads up and it's so annoying.

This tries to be far too clever for its own good and just ends up being a tangled mess .

It's not terrible. If you are a fan of Rhys Meyer then it's worth watching because he's definitely the best thing about the film and mercifully it's nice and short so the plot won't wind you up for too long and I'm sure within 24 hours I will have completely forgotten about the film , just like the main character.

I'm not even 1/2 way in but am distracted by the ever changing facial stitches he has. My god where was editing, makeup, actor, PHOTOS?

Why would such an amazing actor do this film? The directing was awful, his fellow actors were terrible. It was like a 12 year old directed the film. If I knew I was going to be watching a B film, I wouldn't have wasted my time. You could tell who was the killer was early on in the film.

I was expecting Henry the 8th good and this was just awful. I don't know if Jonathan Rhys Meyer was rusty or if it was the directing, but how do you go from outstanding to absolutely terrible?

The whole premise of this film revolves around one single question, is he guilty or not. The journey to that destination is hit and miss, some aspects are good, some aren't. The main issue here is the predictability, the narrative is plotted out in such a way that you know what's happening before it even does, there is an inevitability to the story, even the ending.

I feel that people are quick to deem a film such as this with a one or two star simply because they do not like it, there are elements here which are middle of the road, production values are decent, it's nicely made, and the acting is decent, I am a big fan of Jonathan Rhys Meyers, but the Irishman is underused.

Some of the imagery could have been better realised, with some of the flashback scenes looking as though they were made for a school project.

It's semi watchable, approach it with low expectations and you may just enjoy it.

The cop was likeable, and as a fellow caffeine addict I found him pretty entertaining.

It feels like another of those thrillers that could, and should have been fantastic, so often they just lack a little gritty realism, as Awake did. 5/10