Vanilla Sky is a 2001 American science fiction psychological thriller film[3] directed, written, and co-produced by Cameron Crowe. It is an English-language remake of Alejandro Amenábar's 1997 Spanish film Open Your Eyes, which was written by Amenábar and Mateo Gil. The film stars Tom Cruise, Penélope Cruz, Cameron Diaz, Jason Lee, and Kurt Russell. It follows a magazine publisher who begins to question reality after being disfigured in a car crash.

Vanilla Sky grossed over $203 million against a production budget of $68 million and received mixed reception from critics. Diaz's performance was widely praised, earning her a Screen Actors Guild and a Golden Globe Award nomination. The song "Vanilla Sky" by Paul McCartney was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song. The film later gained a cult following.

REAR COVER

Tom Cruise delivers one of his finest performances in this unforgettably powerful film that reunites him with Cameron Crowe, the director of Jerry Maguire.

Young, handsome and wealthy, publishing tycoon David Aames (Cruise) can have anything his heart desires. Still, David's charmed life seems incomplete. One night, David meets the woman of his dreams (Penélope Cruz) and believes he may have found the missing piece. But a fateful encounter with a jealous lover (Cameron Diaz) suddenly sends David's world out of control, rocketing him on a roller-coaster ride of romance, sex, suspicion and dreams... to a shocking, final awakening you will never forget.

DETAILED PLOT

David Aames, the owner of a large publishing company he inherited from his father, is in prison. Wearing a prosthetic mask, David tells his life story to court psychologist Dr. Curtis McCabe. In flashbacks, David leaves the duties of the publisher to his father's trusted associates while living as a playboy in Manhattan. He is introduced to Sofia Serrano by his best friend, Brian Shelby, during a party.

David and Sofia spend the night together at Sofia's apartment and fall in love, unaware that David's current lover, Julie Gianni, has followed them there. As David leaves, Julie offers him a ride and soon reveals her jealousy of Sofia. She purposely crashes the car, killing herself and disfiguring David. Doctors cannot repair his face using plastic surgery, forcing David to wear a prosthetic mask, and the mental and physical scarring from the accident causes him to become withdrawn and depressed. David joins Brian and Sofia at a club, but they all leave after David starts an argument while drunk. After David insults them and they part ways, David passes out on the street outside the club.

The next day, Sofia returns and apologizes to David. She takes him home, the two form a relationship and he slowly begins to recover. After surgeons find a way to repair David's face despite their prior prognosis, he is plagued by bizarre experiences, such as brief flashbacks of his disfigurement and an encounter with a mysterious man at a bar who informs him that David is omnipotent, demonstrated by the entire bar falling silent at David's command. One day, while at Sofia's, David awakens to find himself in bed with Julie, whose face has replaced Sofia's in their photographs. In shock, he suffocates Julie. David is arrested and imprisoned and his facial disfigurement is mysteriously restored.

McCabe conducts several more interviews, which serve to help David to recall the name "Life Extension". Seeing a company with that name nearby, McCabe arranges to take David there under guard. Rebecca Dearborn, a company representative, explains how Life Extension uses cryonic suspension to save those with terminal illnesses until a cure can be found, keeping them in a lucid dream state to otherwise exercise their mind. David realizes that he is in cryonic suspension and that the world he inhabits is his lucid dream, which has become a nightmare. He escapes McCabe and the guards while calling for "tech support", and rushes for the building's lobby, which is suddenly empty. An elevator opens, revealing the strange man from the bar. As the elevator climbs to the top of an impossibly tall building, the man explains that he is Tech Support and that David has been in suspension for 150 years.

Unable to face the twin traumas of the loss of his love, Sofia, and his facial injuries, he had opted for Life Extension, to be awakened when technology could repair his face, and left the publishing company in the hands of his father's associates, ultimately overdosing on medication and causing Brian to arrange a three-day memorial for him in his home. As part of the program, David had chosen to experience a lucid dream, in which his life would resume the morning after Sofia left him, however, a glitch in the software had caused other elements of his subconscious to distort his dream.

David and Tech Support emerge on the rooftop, high above the clouds. There, Tech Support tells David that while they have corrected the flaw, he now has a choice of either being returned to the dream or being restored to life, requiring a literal leap of faith off the roof that will wake him from his sleep. David chooses the latter, despite McCabe warning him against it. Before jumping, David envisions Brian and Sofia to say his goodbyes. He leaps from the edge of the building, and his life flashes before him. A female voice invites him to open his eyes. David opens his right eye.