Vanilla Sky (DVD)

Vanilla Sky reunites director Cameron Crowe (Jerry Maguire) with the swoonsome Tom Cruise; adds another sexy Cruz (Penélope) and Cameron Diaz for good measure; and delivers a wildly entertaining, bizarre venture into erotic science fiction. Adapted almost exactly from Spanish filmmaker Alejandro Amenábar's 1997 romantic thriller Open Your Eyes, the film follows David Aames (Cruise) as he falls from his graceful Manhattan perch of inordinate wealth, good looks and new-found love with Sofia (Cruz) because of severe facial disfigurement resulting from a car accident caused by a suicidal ex-lover (Diaz). Reduced to wearing a latex mask and spurned by his friends, what at first promises to be a conventional allegory of redemption via true love is turned on its head as Cruise's character only wins back his princess after a miracle of plastic surgery restores his former beauty. A series of plot twists follow, as waking life, technological advances and nightmares merge to dizzying effect, leaving David face to face with his own mortality. Despite a final conceit to some vague morality, the appeal of the film is the wonderfully callous message conveyed by the whole--money and physical beauty equal happiness and an unabashed vanity perfectly embodied by Cruise and Cruz.