In Dreams You Will Lose Part 1: Dreamscape

Last year's Jennifer Lopez-Vincent D'Onofrio vehicle, The Cell wasn't the first time Hollywood intruded on our dreams. The first such trip, a surprisingly well-handled tale called Dreamscape, not only introduced the idea of thought manipulation via dream invasion but did it with a tense touch of political paranoia that is enough to produce insomnia.

In Dreamscape, Dennis Quaid is Alex Gardner, a highly talented psychic who fled a parapsychological study being run by Paul Novotny (Max von Sydow) and has supported himself playing the ponies. Unfortunately, the local bad guys aren't too happy with his "luck," and when two men purporting to be from the college where Novotny works turn up to make him an offer, he uses them as a way to escape mayhem.

Unfortunately, all he does is land in the proverbial fire. Novotny's program has been taken over by a spook--security chief Robert Blair (Christopher Plummer), who has a secret agenda. He wants to kill the President (Eddie Albert), who is plagued with nightmares of nuclear holocaust. The President's cure is disarmament. Blair doesn't approve, and has recruited a psychic psychopath named Tommy Ray Glatman as an assassin.

Alex's gradual realization that all is not well in dreamland progresses in tight, logical steps, as does his personal progression from slacker to hero. Director Joseph Ruben (The Good Son, Sleeping with the Enemy) is adept at balancing characters and action so that neither takes over his story. Scripter David Loughery, who also wrote the Wesley Snipes thriller Passenger 57 and will be forgiven having penned Star Trek 5: The Final Frontier, also knows how to build the plot until suddenly realize you're holding your breath.

What makes this movie work particularly well, however, is that there are no superheroes. Despite what some writers and directors seem to think, villains that don't lose even when they seem to and heroes who arise from their normal lives to become larger than life are much less exciting than characters with whom most people can relate on a personal level. Half the fun of watching any kind of adventure-based film is believing somewhere deep down inside that the people up there on the screen doing those extraordinary things could easily be us.

It also makes a movie more entertaining when we actually have to develop a liking for the hero, which is precisely the case with Alex Gardner. As the movie opens, he's a self-centered user most of us might hang out with but would never trust. It's only as he learns the truth about what's going on around him that his true depth of character comes out, and that, too, is rewarding for the viewer. Quaid handles the transition well, only surrendering his old persona reluctantly. As his love interest, psychologist Jane DeVries, Kate Capshaw is terrific. Her professionalism challenged by her attraction to her "client," she manages to succumb to Alex's considerable charm without surrendering her dignity.

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