Vanilla Sky, the risky Cameron Crowe film that thrust Tom Cruise and Penelope Cruz into one another's arms on screen and in life, is a fascinating failure.

The glossy, gorgeous film was designed as a romantic psychological thriller and adapted by Crowe from Spanish filmmaker Alejandro Amenabar's Abre Los Ojos (Open Your Eyes). That 1997 European hit also featured Spanish superstar Cruz in the same role of Sofia that she plays in the new English-language film.

Cruise, in one of his more complex, multi-layered and accomplished performances ever, plays a rich New York publishing tycoon who is caught up in hubris. He indulges in sexual games with a blond hottie (the courageous Cameron Diaz), swaggers through work and play like a prince, and steals a Latino beauty (Cruz) from his best friend (Jason Lee), a creative writer he treats more like a manservant.

Of course, if you have seen the Amenabar film, you already know this superficial, sparkling world is neither going to stay as it is nor be as clear to audiences as they may like. Like the Spanish film, Vanilla Sky -- named for the creamy colour of the clouds in a French impressionist painting -- is a dreamscape that often veers into a nightmarish odyssey. It is impossible to say with certainty what actually happens. Much of what we see takes place in the anti-hero's twisted brain (think of a marginally friendlier American Pyscho).

The warp begins when the Fatal Attraction-like obsessions of Diaz's character inspire her to try to stage a murder-suicide involving Cruise's cavalier character. If she can't have him, no one will. She dies, he lives, but is horribly disfigured and Cruise spends many scenes in the movie talking to a psychiatrist (Kurt Russell) from behind a latex face mask.

It's absurd, it's silly, it's compelling, it's even magical at times when you're not ridiculing the film. Also interesting is Crowe's deft touch with pieces of dialogue. His characters are poetic, ironic and often iconic. In a single line, reinforced by the great pop music Crowe uses to structure stories and colour the mood, a lifetime is summarized. There are several such gems that come from the mouths of the actors here.

As for the performances, Cruise is perfect as the preening playboy and less so as the man behind the mask (there are echoes of his stilted work in Eyes Wide Shut).

Diaz is dynamic -- and frightening because her character is dangerous. Cruz, however, especially in her loving bedroom scene with Cruise, is pretty. Not pretty good, not pretty bad, just slack-jawed, wow-look-at-her beautiful to look at. Maybe that's all she needs to be here, but it seems pretty shallow.

Structurally, the movie careens wildly from mind-boggling scenes, such as Cruise's superfast run through an empty Times Square, to complete rubbish, such as the laughable "explanations" that bog down the climax of the movie.

There is the crux of the problem, the key to the failure of Vanilla Sky. Hollywood films as gutsy as this one shouldn't cop out and try to explain everything away just because it's complicated. This movie needed to be a provocative psychological mystery -- and stay that way. (More on: Vanilla Sky).

(This film is rated AA)

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