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Page 1 of 2 Just as a way of a preface, let me say that I am writing this review at the Atlanta Airport, where they tried to bait and switch me out of eight bucks for some Wi-Fi access. Yeah, I don’t think so. As I tell my daughter, “Daddy is like a little bird: cheep cheep!” So you can thank Atlanta for any errors or inaccuracies in this review. Thanks, Atlanta. (I am also getting my pretty laptop all greasy with some gross Chick-Fil-A, but that one is totally my fault.) So anyway, 2001’s Chasing Sleep marks the first, and so far only, feature film from Mike Walker. Which is too bad, because it is absolutely excellent. From the cast, to the art direction, to the all important thing, what do you call it? Oh yeah, the good script.
 | Jeff Daniels stars as failed-poet-turned-disgruntled-English-Professor Ed Saxon. He wakes up one night in the wee hours to find that his wife never came home. He makes a few calls, to her best friend, the local hospital, and eventually 911. Everybody expresses concern, but of course the police can’t do anything until she has been missing for 72 hours. So Ed must try to keep himself together while trying to find out what became of her. This simple premise then begins to spin an ever-increasingly complex web through the 90-minute running time. First off, there is the fact that Ed never leaves the house. Not to search for his missing wife, not to go to work, not even to have a much-needed sleeping pill prescription filled. Oh, did I say sleeping pills? Ed thinks he is an insomniac, but we are given reason to believe, through very clever editing techniques, that Ed may be sleeping a lot more than he thinks he is. Like when he receives a call from the police saying they want to talk to him, and then he gets a knock on the door the second he hangs up the phone, and when he opens it we see it is nighttime, but there was bright daylight streaming through the window when he was on the phone. |
The cast is rounded out by Gil Bellows (probably most well-known for his role on Ally MacBeal) as Detective Derm, the delightfully earnest and deadpan cop assigned to help find the whereabouts of Eve Saxon; Julian McMahon (Dr. Nip/Tuck Doom himself) as George Simian, the man who not only has been carrying on an affair with Eve, but biffs Ed in the face a few times (jeez, maybe he should kick his puppy, too); and Emily Bergl as Sally Crumb, an adoring student and Ed’s own would-be affair. Horror fans might remember Bergl from the lead role in The Rage: Carrie 2. (Shut up, I liked it.) All of these characters and forces converge on Ed, as well as a well-meaning psychologist and the specter of his looming unemployment for failure to actually show up for work (oh, and telling the dean and his secretary to go fuck themselves), and conspire to push him completely over the edge. As if he wasn’t already teetering more than a bit precariously on that cliff face to begin with. Oops, did I give something away? |  |
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