This is one of those movies which should have been great only to become a disaster. It's based partly on the Chinese proverb that four emotions form the foundation of life, Happiness, Pleasure, Sorrow, and Love, and those emotions are embodied by four very shallow characters. However, the real foundations of this film are Anger, Frustration, and Pretentiousness. Anyway, the four foundations are used to create four stories which interlock, no doubt inspired by Pulp Fiction. The first story features a timid and stressed-out investment banker identified as Happiness (Forest Whittaker) who has worked hard and played by the rules, only to have a lonely and frustrating life to show for it. So when he overhears his supervisors planning to bet on a horse race with an insider's tip, he bets heavily on the horse, only to lose it all and owe huge money to a classy but ruthless gangster named Fingers (Andy Garcia, who has played this kind of role more times than I can remember). One of Whittaker's more successful clients is identified as Pleasure (Brenden Fraser), a gangster's enforcer of Fingers' who has the ability to see pieces of the future. That ability is not entirely a blessing, as the visions are hard to interpret and take the spontaneity and surprise out of life. Well, Fraser's character is hired by Fingers to babysit his obnoxious gangster wannabe nephew Tony (Emile Hirsch), who of course makes trouble and angers powerful people, which results in Fraser's being beaten up severely. Meanwhile, the third story is about a beautiful but ditsy and vain pop singer named Trista (Sarah Michelle Gellar), who is also identified as "Sorrow." Her sorrow comes when her manager embezzles from her and sells her contract to Fingers to pay off an overwhelming gambling debt. Fingers sees this as a chance to go legit, but he clearly plans to work Trista to death while taking most of her earnings until her fifteen minutes of fame is over. In the last story, Love is a doctor (Kevin Bacon) who's in love with his best friend's wife, a beautiful epidemiologist (Julie Delpy) who gets bitten by a lethal snake and needs a blood transfusion from a rare blood type or she'll die. Did you get all that? A big problem is that all of characters behave in ways so stupid, it's impossible to care about them. It gets even more infuriating because they are forced to react to coincidences that are improbable in a way that's science fiction. There are also a number of lines featuring fortune cookie philosophy and existential angst that are meant to be profound but only evoke sneers from intelligent people. Is there anything good about this film? Well, Jieho Lee proves to be a technically competent director. Also, the talented actors do what they can with their cardboard roles. As a result, there are some attractive shots and a few isolated scenes work. But these minor virtues are overwhelmed by the stupidity and pretentiousness of the script.
Review of The Air I Breathe
