The Air I Breathe

Here I go again. It's good that no one will sue me for having eclectic taste; perhaps I'm just looking for something that the typical film 'critic' isn't... because usually the films that make my socks go up and down are thought provoking. That's the big criteria. Does it get me thinking... does it linger in the back room of my mind for days... do I find myself returning to a scene... and most importantly, does it make me glimpse yet another facet of the ever fascinating human condition? The Air I Breathe did just those things... so I'm unmoved that virtually every paid critic hated it. I found it thought provoking.

Four main characters, representing the four emotional cornerstones of human existence, Happiness, Pleasure, Sorrow and Love, are linked together by luck? destiny? and a really evil crime boss who goes by the name of Fingers (Andy Garcia.) The characters have no names - a fact that only registered with me after it was over - they are archetypes. Happiness (Forest Whitaker) risks everything in an effort to simply have something extraordinary happen. Life is a burden to Pleasure (Brendan Fraser) until his gift of precognition desserts him. Sorrow (Sarah Michelle Gellar) is a sad victim of circumstance who discovers the strength to finally live when Love (Kevin Bacon) offers her the chance to save a life. Their stories are woven together (think Babel or Crash,) and presented in vignettes that are chronologically uneven, but you'll get the point. Two will make it. Two won't.

You'll figure out how an unknown director got this cast in a minute - this is an actors film and they all do a fine job. Andy Garcia is chilling, Whitaker and Gellar take fear and pain to new levels and Fraser stays complicated. It's a violent story well done without going over the top, and I personally enjoyed the fact that the observer is asked to read between the obvious lines. Is the outcome predictable? Perhaps. Was it thought provoking? Definitely. See the (not so great) website here.