Plot Details: This opinion reveals minor details about the movie's plot.

The Story

George Grieves (Thomas Cavanagh) is an every man. He has just celebrated his 40th birthday. He has a beautiful loving wife (Paget Brewster) and two teenage children. His friends and his brother celebrate his birthday with him. The following day, George must undergo a routine procedure, a colonoscopy. I haven't had my insides filmed yet, but I am sure that one day that may be the subject of a writers corner piece, it is the sort of exam that noone wants, but everyone should have. Seeing this movie makes me want one less.

Because a Colonoscopy is an invasive surgery, you are put under completely for the procedure. George is upset because they keep mispronouncing his name as George Grevious instead of Grieves. When George wakes up, he is in a lot of pain, and he has an incision in his stomach. For those of you who don't know what a colonoscopy is, it is an examination of your colon done by the way of a camera placed up your rectum. No stomach incisions are involved. Apparently George Grevious was scheduled for a surgery, but got a colonoscopy instead. Our protagonist George Grieves got an unnecessary surgery. George is understandably upset by this. Only two people seem to come in to see him on a regular basis and neither seems to want to explain what happened. A very sexy nurse Zoe (Katherine Cunningham Eves) attends to him, and a very strict male nurse, a tall imposing black man Mandingo (Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs).

Soon we find ourselves in a film that could be a Robin Cooke medical thriller, or a Stephen King film, or just a straight up tale of medical malpractice. We, like the films protagonist George, don't know at the beginning. Of course as the film continues, it is obvious to us, if not to George that much of what is going on must be in the imagination of George. Zoe represents all his sexual fantasies and Mandingo represents all of his fears. Some of the gore in the film reminded me of a David Cronenberg type shocker, but without the extreme bits of imagination that Cronenberg has. The film moves along with George investigating what has happened to him, and what is going on in the hospital, especially the closed down wing that is supposedly "under construction". Things go from bad to worse for George.

Interspersed with nightmare scenes at the hospital were memories of George's birthday party and all his friends family and his hopes and dreams. These also seem to pop up in unexpected ways in Georges post operative thoughts and experiences.

What am I watching??

I was finally able to determine that this was in reality a movie like the far and above superior Stay with Ryan Gosling in which Gosling's thoughts all reflect the goings on as he lays comatose in a car accident, interspersed with his past experiences.

Sublime wants to be a psychological thriller on par with Stay or the earlier Jacob's Ladder or any number of films in which we can't tell if our protagonist is in a dream reality or in a real nightmare. Is he sane, insane, dead, alive or some state in between? Films like Vanilla Sky (or the superior original Abres Los Ojos for us film geeks) and Stay kept us guessing and gave us clues to the reality so that when the truth was revealed at the end, we were pleased at having guessed or astounded but satisfied, because it tied up all the percursors in the film. Sublime doesn't do a good job with this, like George's surgery, the job is botched. When the conclusion was reached, I felt more like I knew it was coming, but not because the clues were sublime. The clues were too obvious too early in the film to keep me engaged in what should have been a satisfying psychological thriller. If the clues or the story had been a bit vague or had pointed in different directions, I believe I would have been more pleased with this film.

Acting / Direction etc.

Sorry to say, but in addition to a plot that didn't really work for me, the acting didn't develop any of the characters enough for me to get a sense for them or to understand or more importantly care what was happening. The film probably had a low budget because it was filmed almost entirely on sets that represented Georges house for his 40th birthday party and the hospital. This was Tony Krantz's first film for directing, although he has produced several films. Film buffs will realize that directing is a heck of a lot different from passing out the money and hiring people to do a film. I sort of saw his point in the film that if we spend our life in fear of things that our mind may bring those fears to reality.

Summary

After viewing the film and thinking about it, I could really only think of half a dozen better films along the same themes. One day, most of us will have to have a colonoscopy to insure we don't have colon cancer. However, I hope that because of this review, most of you won't have to watch this film. It was below average, and Sublime only gets two stars from me.



Recommended: No

Viewing Format: DVD
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age