Reviews of Recent Independent, Foreign, & Documentary Films in Theaters and DVD/Home Video
Directed by Jieho Lee Produced by Emilio Diez Barroso, Darlene Caamaño Loquet & Paul Schiff Written by Bob DeRosa & Lee Cinematography by Walt Lloyd Edited by Robert Hoffman Music by Marcelo Zarvos Released by ThinkFilm USA. 97 min. Rated R With Brendan Fraser, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Kevin Bacon, Forest Whitaker, Emile Hirsch, Andy Garcia, Cecilia Suarez & Julie Delpy
It’s only up from here in 2008. Hollywood has delivered the
first mustn’t-see film of the new year with the painfully clichéd and desperately-trying-way-too-hard The Air I Breathe.
Loosely inspired by an ancient Chinese proverb that breaks life down into four emotional cornerstones – happiness, pleasure, sorrow and love – this
Crash/Babel wannabe brings together the lives of four seemingly unrelated people, each with life threatening conflicts of their own: a
businessman (Forrest Whitaker) who bets his life on a fixed horse race, a mobster (Brendan Frasier) who can see the future, a Britney Spears-like pop
star (Sara Michelle Gellar), and a doctor (Kevin Bacon) trying to save the women he loves from a deadly snake bite.
The film creates tension early with the introduction and plight of Whitaker’s character, and 20 minutes into the movie, it feels like director Jieho Lee has
begun to fan
the fires of something truly special. However, when Whitaker leaves the screen, he takes every bit of the film’s credibility, acting and otherwise,
with him. There is close to no chemistry within the cast, and Frasier’s portrayal of a mobster is about as unrealistic as it gets. The cast gets no
assistance from the static and hackneyed dialogue penned by Lee and Bob DeRosa, who reserve the most insipid of lines for mob boss Fingers
(Andy Garcia, who for the most part carbon copies his Ocean’s Eleven role).
Just when you think that it isn’t possible for the plot to get more out of hand – it does. The four stories are so forcefully woven that each feels
like a separate skit. What are supposed to be the most dramatic and emotional scenes in the film are laughable, especially the corny,
Cliffhanger-like
action sequence at the climax.
Don’t let the cool looking movie poster with a butterfly atop a gun fool you. You need not look further than the titles of the two aforementioned
films to describe what The Air I Breathe essentially does: babels and crashes. Matt Alesevich
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