Like a good music video, The Air I Breathe opens with an intense combination of cityscape graphics, thumping music, and flashing names of famous people. The film is directed by former music video director Jieho Lee, but after this enticing beginning that plays up his talents, The Air I Breathe is weighed down by the tired conventions of its genre. This genre—the drama of many intertwining storylines—has turned up in so many offerings lately, like Babel and Crash, that the concept of loosely connected characters is becoming stale. The Air I Breathe is no exception.
Based on an Asian proverb that breaks life down into four emotions, The Air I Breathe uses a separate vignette and protagonist to represent each one. Brendan Fraser stars as Pleasure, Kevin Bacon as Love, Forest Whitaker as Happiness, and Sarah Michelle Gellar as Sorrow.
Somehow, all the characters’ lives connect to the crime boss Fingers, played by Andy Garcia in a semi-reprisal of his villainous casino-owner character in the Ocean’s 11 movies. More importantly, the protagonists connect to each other in a series of fairly ridiculous coincidences. Of course, these connections attempt to support a profound theme: “Character is destiny, and each of us makes our own fate.” Luckily for the audience, many of the main characters’ fates consist of violent misery, which adds some excitement to the movie’s many contrivances.
The strongest element of The Air I Breathe is the acting, and the performances from the huge ensemble are all solid. Fraser’s somber gangster is the film’s most compelling character. Even though he works for Fingers, his life is guided by his own strict—though unconventional—moral code. He is thoughtful while the hooligans who surround him—from the lonely, awkward banker played by Whitaker to the troubled pop star played by Gellar—are exceedingly naïve.
Fraser’s performance creates a complex character who risks his life trying to protect others from his own ruthless boss. This interesting characterization fails, however, when the screenplay drags supernatural premonitions into the mix.
Talented actors fill up the supporting roles as well: the amazing Julie Delpy appears as Kevin Bacon’s lifelong crush, Emile Hirsch plays Fingers’s overzealous nephew, and even John Cho from Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle shows up as an office man with a penchant for gambling.
These actors have plenty of opportunity to display their dramatic talent—the characters in The Air I Breathe are not a stoic bunch. Forest Whitaker laughs maniacally as police snipers surround his character on a city rooftop while Sarah Michelle Gellar cries her head off as her character is gagged and tied to a chair. Unfortunately, though the fast-paced movie never bores, it never inspires such strong emotions from its audience.