Sparks fly when Cruise meets Cruz (From Western Telegraph)

Sparks fly when Cruise meets Cruz

Vanilla Sky Directed by Cameron Crowe Starring Tom Cruise, Penelope Cruz, Cameron Diaz, Kurt Russell, Timothy Spall. Cert. 15

When I was a teenager and wondering why all the good looking girls went out with older boys the toothy grin of Tom Cruise (in over indulgent, 80s, elongated Jean commercial movies like Top Gun and Cocktail) did nothing but annoy me. Then I saw Rain Man. And then I stayed up late one night to watch the Oscar ceremony where Dustin Hoffman got an Oscar for his autistic savant creation, and something stirred inside me.

While Hoffman may have deserved a reward for his role, even though I was not an actor yet I still thought that Tom Cruise had been robbed. Or if not robbed at least unfairly overlooked when it came to lavishing the kind of praise you can keep forever on your mantle-piece. In Rain Man Tom Cruise had, to my mind, by far the harder role, a Mission Impossible if you like. For Hoffman, to twitch and do a funny walk and remember to avoid eye contact must have been tiring but far easier than to do what Cruise did so well, so well that you didnt even notice.

He had to play straight, play a no good poser but make you understand him and like him. So often in films the harder parts, the thankless task of the straight guy, asked to do an awful lot with not very much material, is ignored but only if he/she has done all that well enough. Fail and they ruin the picture and the career will drag the rotting carcass of the performance gamble along to every audition them.

The point is that post Rain Man my respect for Cruise grew and grew and even the nonsense and howling accents of Far And Away could not diminish my respect for what the vertically challenged heart throb does on screen. He isnt always great but more often than not he gets away with it.

There arent that many actors who have had such huge, top of the box office chart successes in three decades. One of my favourite Cruise movies, Jerry Maguire, is another one that found success at the Oscars while only nominating its pintsize star. And the director of that film, Cameron Crowe, has teamed up with Cruise again here for something wholly darker but more beautiful than anything either have done before.

Vanilla Sky is a remake, but bizarrely not of some old black and white. Instead it is the English language version of Alejandro Amenabers 1997 thriller Open Your Eyes, what the Spanish is for that Ive no idea.

(Amenabers first English language film was of course produced by Tom Cruise and starred his then wife Nicole Kidman. Anyone whose eyes have ever strayed to the legitimate vicarious living or voyeurism of Hello Magazine, I do know that its called Ola! in Spain, will know that Cruise is now with, perhaps even married to, the other Cruise, this time Cruz, Penelope. They met on Vanilla Sky and she is reprising the role she played in Amenabers version of the same story! Are you with me? I just point this out because the intricacies of the modern studio system are every bit as fascinating a web of talent, love and money as Fairbanks Junior ever saw.)

So Vanilla Sky is about a man called David Aames. He is a New York "IT" man. A Sex In The City, Gucci wearing, classic Ferrari driving, socialite whos big in publishing. His problem, a problem that literally drives him if not crazy certainly to a breaking point that changes him for ever is this: which girl, Cameron Diaz or Penelope Cruz?

Well, boo-hoo! If I could only wake up any morning and remember that THAT was my biggest problem! Yes, so thats the down side. The good side is that this film is just brilliant. Its a psychological thriller I suppose. Diaz soon takes on the wronged woman as Cruise falls more and more in love with Cruz.

Suddenly everything in his life turns upside down and we are left wondering what is real and what is merely the product of a stressed businessmans nightmares. The questions we want to ask are put far more eloquently by the shrink, played by Kurt Russell.

Slowly we follow Aames (Cruise) to his crescendo of metamorphosis! If I elucidate further it will ruin a film where the whole point is the not knowing exactly whats going on until youre supposed to. On the journey you follow, you will never see New York looking so mesmericly romantic and exciting and beautiful and dramatic and like a place out of the movies?

Vanilla Sky then is I think the first must see film of 2002. Diaz is able to be as bad as she can make her stock brat? character seem and Cruz is cute, not beautiful but certainly as cute as the most beautiful actresses are beautiful. And lastly Cruise? Maybe this time well get to hear his acceptance speech.

Vaughan Sivell