I decided to review these movies because they are the same movie anyway. The movies have the same storylines, the same dialogues, and the same settings. The differences are the languages, the actors, and the attitudes. Abre los ojos/Open Your Eyes is directed by Alejandro Amenábar. The Hollywood remake is titled Vanilla Sky and directed by Cameron Crowe. Although the movies have the same theme, I discovers there are same differences in these movies. Which one do you like?

A rich and handsome man named César (Eduardo Noriega) / David (Tom Cruise) has everything; a girlfriend named Nuria (Najwa Nimri) / Julianna (Cameron Diaz), successfull business, and a best friend named Pelayo (Fele Martínez) / Brian (Jason Lee). One day he met a woman at his birthday party named Sofia (Penélope Cruz) and falls in love with her. He spent a night with her, and the next day got himself a car accident which disfigured his face completely. Distraught, he is also accused of murder. A psychiatrist named Antonio (Chete Lera) / Curtis (Kurt Russel) is assigned to help him solve the mystery.

The movies are basically the same damn one movie! I don't understand the whole concept of 'remake'. I guess it's okay to have a remake. But Vanilla Sky is just a total rip-off from the original Open Your Eyes. And now I feel sorry for the director of Open Your Eyes, since he's the genius behind this genuinely original story, but Cameron Crowe comes along and takes all the credit. I am not one of those grouches who hates remakes, but if you're going to remake a film, put your own spin on it! Don't take all the original ideas and conduct it with different actors! And wait a couple decades for God's sake! While Vanilla Sky was a solid film, Open Your Eyes still ranks as the better version. It's quite a contrast in styles. Vanilla sky tried being over the top, Open Your Eyes proved to be more subtle and controlled. I saw Vanilla Sky before I saw Open Your Eyes and therefore the surprise in the end was gone but with knowledge of the original, I enjoyed it more. The movies are almost exactly the same but here we don't have the distraction of Hollywood actors. Penélope Cruz is in both movies and in both movies she plays Sofia, and she was far more articulate and natural in her native tongue. Vanilla Sky mounts a spectacle that overshoots boldness and ambition and idiosyncrasy and heads right for arrogance and pretension extraordinarily narcissistic high-concept vanity project for overblown and self-indulgent remake.

I just wanna say that Eduardo Noriega is unbelievably handsome. Seriously, he is so downright handsome. He's like a handsome statue with a handsome face. Unbelievable! Tom Cruise is playing the same character as Eduardo Noriega, and the difference is like heaven and earth. They are both playing unlikeable character, but somehow I feel more sympathetic towards the character of César rather than the character of David. He is an extremely attractive man and knows how to express a plethora of emotions. It's the type of film that you need to sit down and pay attention to. Let yourself be absorbed by it awesome story and your in for real treat. Open Your Eyes is a dark, beautiful film that can be quite harrowing in parts, it effectively melds a mix of styles into a sharp, thought provoking whole. But the Hollywoodnization of a classic put me right off so I went looking for the real thing. Simply a long humourous and painful journey through a man's shallow existence. It's a very profound movie with many themes: the nature of friendship, guilt and forgiveness, deja vu, all rolled into a delightfully twisted mystery story which reveals itself bit by bit. The ending is so poignant, I was touched despite the previous actions of the lead character. The story of a man who has just about everything, thinks he can have it all, is given a means to have whatever he wants, and loses it because he has a conscience. Or maybe not. Maybe just because life sucks. I recommend the original Abre los ojos / Open Your Eyes than Vanilla Sky.

Ratings:

Abre los ojos / Open Your Eyes = 8/10

Vanilla Sky = 5/10