‘Awake’

Awake is a psychological thriller about a phenomenon called ‘Anesthesia Awareness’. With a little research, I’ve found lots about this topic and am not going to argue that it may or may not exist. Afterall, I’m not writing this about the phenomenon itself. I’m writing this about the movie! Now I don’t often write movie reviews…in fact, I’ve only ever written one before. That was a review for the movie ‘Pulse’…and believe me, it was NOT a good review. Well I suppose it was mostly focused on the audience aspect of the movie, but the movie itself was atrocious. So I think you get the hint when I say I’ve only ever written one bad review….this review is about a BAD MOVIE!

Oh, where do I start? Let me first start by saying that I’m not writing this to discourage you from seeing the movie. I tell everyone, ‘Just because someone tells you it’s bad are you going to listen and not think for yourself or are you going to go and form your own opinion?’ so, yes, that’s not my intention here. I simply would like to point out some of the issues I had, personally, with the movie.

First things first, I’m going to pick on the acting and the story line. Now, I’m not sure what constitutes good acting nowadays, and I’m not sure if Hayden Christenson is considered a good actor or if he’s just feeding off the fame that Star Wars gave him, but I thought his acting was very much so sub-par in this movie. Perhaps everyone just thought he was a good actor because the Star Wars trilogy was amazing…in this movie, he just wasn’t amazing. His character was bland and just poorly executed by my standards. I’m not saying you’ll all agree, in fact I haven’t seen many Hayden Christenson films, so feel free to disagree. I’m just saying that’s what I thought. The story line was interesting but definitely not thrilling. I thought a thriller was supposed to make you go ‘Oooooo’ or ‘Ahhhhh’…I certainly wasn’t oooed or ahhed. Interesting, but still something to be desired. Not to mention, the ending was horrible. Yes things were wrapped up in the end, but it was just bad for me. Oh yeah, and I’m gonna ruin this a bit for anyone who wants to see the movie…Jessica Alba….is a bad guy!!!! Whose bright idea was it to make Jessica Alba a bad guy?! It just doesn’t fit her! With her cute pudgy cheeks and her toothy grin, she just doesn’t fit the persona of a bad guy.

Now, I’m going to pick on the little details of the movie. Being a student going into the medical profession, I’ve noticed several things about this movie that are completely inconsistent with reality. Now, I think, nowadays we should be trying to make movies that are closer to reality. THAT would be thrilling. I mean, come on, our CGI is getting so good nowadays that lots of people can hardly tell the difference between animation and real life. Take ‘Beowulf’ for example. The individual I went to this movie with didn’t realize it was animated until at least 10 or 15 minutes into the movie, it was that real. I’ve never heard anyone say, “Oh that movie was WAY too real, I didn’t like it!” If anyone has heard someone say that, then tell me but I’ve never heard it, so why shouldn’t we be aiming to make movies that are closer to the real thing? You always hear, “Wow that was awesome and SO real!” So let’s aim to make things closer to reality.

Point number one on the medical inconsistencies. Hayden Christenson’s character (Clay Beresford) when first put on the table for surgery, has a resting heart rate of 30. Unless he’s an incredibly fit athlete there is NO reason why his heart rate should be that low. The regular resting heart rate of any individual is between 60 to 100 beats a minute. A fit athlete can have a resting heart rate of 50 beats a minute, but no lower. Not only was his resting heart rate 30, but his heart rate when he got his transplant and the heart was restarted was also 30! AND, the surgeon accepted 30 to be good! 30 is not normal, and it certainly isn’t good! “Oh, he’s in sinus bradycardia, that’s fine, let’s do nothing about it!”

My second point with medical inconsistencies was the monitoring of his central venous pressure without a proper line to monitor it with. As far as I could tell he had only one IV and that one was used for drug administration. For anyone who doesn’t know what I’m talking about, central venous pressure monitoring requires that a line (something like an IV) be inserted and traced all the way to your right atrium, either through your neck, or in your groin area (generally). He didn’t seem to have a neck line, and there didn’t appear to be a line from the groin on the shots from overhead. So how were they monitoring his central venous pressure?

Third, after his heart was transplanted and that fine heart rate of 30 suddenly stopped, they gave us a good look at the monitor as they called out that he was in ‘Afib’. This is the short version of atrial fibrillation. But like I mentioned they gave us a good view of the monitor, and the ECG tracing, clearly, was NOT Afib. It was more of an asystole. For anyone who doesn’t know what I’m saying, Afib is rarely a lifethreatening thing, and often creates a squiggly line on the ECG with a normal conduction to the ventricles. A more threatening rhythm would be ventricular fibrillation. But, as I mentioned, the monitor was showing asystole. This means that there is NO electrical activity at all in the heart and shows up on the ECG as a flat line. That’s what they showed as they were calling out ‘Afib’. Not only that, they defibrillated him (shocked him). You wouldn’t defibrillate atrial fibrillation. And you can’t defibrillate asystole. Defibrillation requires something of a rhythm to shock. They should have started CPR before shocking him.

Fourth, when they intubated him for the surgery, the technique was horrible. You could only see from the side, but it was so obvious that they put the laryngoscope blade right down the middle, which they shouldn’t have. It’s supposed to go in from the right. Lots of you won’t understand what I’m talking about when I say ‘laryngoscope’ or comment on the technique, but I know there are lots who might. Once they had the tube in, it was way too deep. There was only maybe a centimeter of the tube out of his mouth. I know I wouldn’t leave a tube that way. After that, they left the tube as it was…they didn’t tie it or tape it to keep it in place. DANGEROUS! If you want that tube to stay, you have to secure it! There was no way of securing that tube throughout the whole movie!! Dangerous!!

Fifth, this movie was about ‘Anesthesia Awareness’, but wouldn’t you have to give anesthesia for that to be the phenomenon. From what I could tell, there were no anesthetic gases delivered to the character during the surgery. Or at least they never mentioned them. They mentioned some drugs they used like Fentanyl, Midazolam, and Milrinone, but never mentioned anesthetic gases. So now wonder the guy was AWAKE!!!

And last, but not least, post-op Clay Beresford was extubated (the breathing tube was gone) and awake. I’ve seen heart transplant patients in the hospital. They NEVER wake up that quickly. In fact, even people having much smaller procedures are always out for a few hours before they’re woken up and extubated. Heart transplant patients spend a lot of time in bed, with a breathing tube, with lots of drugs and lines in them. And no one wakes up the way Clay Beresford did.

So, yes, that’s it. I can accept little flaws in movies, because they’re just that – movies. But this movie had so many flaws that I simply couldn’t bear to leave it alone. Lots of my classmates might be laughing at me for picking out all the little medical problems with the movies, but I repeat again, shouldn’t we be aiming to make movies more consistent with reality?? If no one points out that something is wrong, how can we achieve that consistency? And I repeat again, just because I give it a bad review is no reason why you shouldn’t go waste your money to form your own opinion. Agree with me or disagree with me, I don’t care, that’s just my opinion on the movie.