The Air I Breathe

Plot synopsis:
Each of the elements of life is portrayed using four different people in the urban streets of Los Angeles, with the gangster Fingers (Garcia) playing the character that intertwines all four individuals.
Happiness
Forest Whitaker plays a meek bank employee who loves butterflies. He accidentally overhears acquaintances discuss a fixed horse race, and decides to bet $50,000, borrowing from a bookie, Fingers. Unfortunately he loses the bet.
Fingers derives his name from his habit of cutting off the fingers of those who don’t pay back their debts. Fingers threatens Happiness, and Pleasure, Finger's enforcer, visits him to collect, but pities Happiness, so gives him a revolver and leaves. In desperation, Happiness robs the bank. While fleeing, he is slightly hit by a moving vehicle, then escapes to the top of a building. Surrounded, the police order him to drop his gun. He does not comply, throwing the money bag off the roof, and is killed by the police. When he hits the ground his coat is spread out making him look like a butterfly.
Pleasure
Brendan Fraser plays a man with a sad past and an ability to see the future of the people he meets, an ability that deprives him of the pleasure of enjoying the surprises in life. When he was young, he was forced to defend his younger brother in a street fight against two teenagers. Pleasure won the fight but found his brother lying dead. Pleasure often has flashbacks of this scene throughout the film. Later in life, Pleasure joins Fingers' gang and becomes one of his favorites due mostly to his ability. He, however, cannot see the future of Trista (Gellar).
He is assigned to look after Fingers' visiting nephew, Tony. He has a vision of Tony climbing a fence and falling back. To avoid trouble, he leaves Tony in a club while working (collecting protection money). Unfortunately, one of the girls that Tony is with, high on drugs, staggers into the next room. When Tony follows her, they struggle over a gun, and an older mobster gets shot. Pleasure rescues Tony, and they run from the henchmen, ending at the fence of the earlier vision. Tony gets away, and it is Pleasure who is caught by the henchmen, severely beaten, and then treated by Love (Bacon) in a hospital.
Sorrow
Sarah Michelle Gellar plays a somewhat morose up-and-coming pop singer/dancer with the stage name "Trista". In flashback, it's revealed that as a young child, she saw her father killed when he was accidentally hit by a moving car, immediately after promising to 'be there for her', and the loss affects her deeply. Trista's manager is deeply indebted to Fingers, and embezzles Trista's money to pay Fingers, but that is not enough, so he assigns Trista's contract to Fingers. Trista, incensed, escapes from Fingers and meets Pleasure. Fingers, naturally, has already ordered his team to find her. Pleasure, sympathetic to her, helps Trista by letting her stay with him, knowing that his house is the only place Fingers wouldn't search for her. They become lovers, but soon Fingers finds out about her location, and kills Pleasure, causing Trista even more sorrow. Her blood type is Kp(a-b-), which she reveals when a TV interviewer asks her what is special about her. This becomes hopeful information when Love hears it on the television, as he is searching for that blood type, the same as Gina's, when he is trying to save her life.
Love
Kevin Bacon plays a doctor who is in love with his longtime friend Gina (Julie Delpy). He never confessed his love and, so, she married his best friend. Gina gets bitten by a poisonous snake and needs a rare type of blood. Desperate, Love races to the location where Trista is filming the interview; however, Trista's assistant is in the process of trying to help Trista run away. Love runs to Trista. Her bodyguards, thinking he is a crazed fan, grab him while Trista is accidentally knocked down, hits her head and ends up in the hospital. When she awakens, Fingers informs her that she will have to abort the baby that she has just become aware that she is carrying. In her sorrow that the baby, the one thing she has left of the man she loved (Pleasure) will be lost, she sneaks out of her room and goes to the roof to jump off and commit suicide. Love, by circumstance, sees her and races up in time to see her step off the ledge. He grabs the bed sheet that she had wrapped around her like a cape and catches her. He tells her she will have to come up and grab his hand for him to be able to pull her up. After she does this, the movie flashes to Gina, saved, awakening from her coma. Love loans Trista his car as a gift for saving Gina and she leaves the hospital.
Ending
Fingers looks for Trista at the hospital, but his efforts to find her are in vain, as she has already left. As Trista escapes in Love's car, she slightly hits Happiness as he runs in front of her car in his dash from the bank (in the scene that we saw from his point of view earlier); as she sits at the intersection, as she's coming to grips with all that has happened, the money bag Happiness threw from the top of the building lands on her car's rooftop. The film closes with Trista at an airport traveling away, the money bag providing her with all the financial support she needs to escape from Fingers and start a new life for herself and her baby abroad.

Tags: neo noir, murder, paranormal, thought-provoking, violence, flashback, inspiring, romantic, sadist, home movie

Review:
And, after all, that is what art should aspire to do.The film is based on a Chinese proverb which says that life consists of four emotions: Happiness, Pleasure, Sorrow, and Love.
Forest Whitaker is Happiness, Brendan Fraser is Pleasure, Sarah Michelle Gellar is Sorrow, and Kevin Bacon is Love.
This is what sociologists study and discuss everyday.The script was performed sensationally, by a stellar cast (Brendan Frasier, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Andy Garcia, Kevin Bacon, Forest Whitaker), encompassing a gritty, fast paced storyline, with melancholic overtones.
Each performance is worth its weight in gold - Garcia is frightening as mafia boss "Fingers", Frasier pulls at your heart with his resignation to the terrible fates of the people around him and Bacon and Whitaker will surely gain your sympathy with the sheer level of their desperation.The only thing this film is guilty of is invoking emotion and thought from its viewers - and isn't that the reason to watch it in the first place?.
This is one of the movies that if you pay close attention to the story and what the message is you will find yourself profoundly stupid and clueless when it comes to basic human emotions and how everything is somehow connected.(chaos theory...?) the performances were absolutely amazing.I'd never seen Sarah Michelle Gellar portray such a role so well,she really moved me as Sorrow and Forest Whitaker as well.The roles fit the actors like a glove.the photography is beautiful.the story is very moving and the ending surprising.
loved it +++++++ Maybe it wont make it as one of the greatest films ever but it's the kind of movie i'd like to store and watch again sometime later in the future instead of some box office hit..
I began loving this movie from very first fifth minute- to the very end.The cast is amazing - both main and supporting actors gave me their best.
But then again, this film is not intended for the educated and demanding critics.It's rather intended for the oblivious Generation X who is lost in chaos and holds on to the little bit of hope that is left in a bleak future yet to come.(you know who you are)The Air I Breath tells a story of amazing yet globally recognizable incidences and displays numerous examples of clairvoyance, Deja-Vu, synchronicity and coincidence from a somewhat Zen/Jungian point of view, although far more pessimistic.The plot is told from various perspectives that all intervene in one way or the other a la Magnolia/Pulp Fiction/etc.
Lee's The Air I Breathe, based on an ancient Chinese proverb that life can be broken down into the four emotional cornerstones of Happiness, Pleasure, Sorrow, and Love, is not as good as Haggis' film, and I think even that one is overrated.
"The Air I Breathe" is perhaps one of the most tragically overlooked films of 2007.An ensemble cast featuring Brendan Fraser, Julie Delpy, Andy Garcia, Forest Whitaker and Sarah Michelle Gellar, among many others, is brought together perfectly in this study of the Six Degrees of Separation by relatively fresh director Jieho Lee.The story, which is apparently based upon an old Chinese proverb, unfolds in four acts, titled Happiness, Pleasure, Sorrow and Love.
Each of the acts focuses on a character representative of the suggested emotion, with Whitaker's Happiness and Fraser's Pleasure standing out as the strongest among a plethora of powerhouse performances.Like other ensemble dramas -- smash hit and Oscar winner Crash (2005) comes to mind -- the film weaves a tapestry with its players, connecting them all to one-another in ways which may seem unimaginable at the start, but wholly believable and even touching come the film's stunning conclusion.The film has it all, much akin to the proverb it seeks to replicate.
The film's saving grace (if it can be called that) is that it is broken down into 4 segments, based on a Chinese proverb regarding the emotions happiness, pleasure, sorrow, and love.
don't get these far-fetched absurd little uninteresting stories and then unite them all with the point that they (don't) have in common.the reason I gave it a 4/10 is simply because Forest, Garcia and Bacon delivered very very well otherwise the movie would have been even more hateful..
A doctor (Kevin Bacon) seeks a blood donor that might have a rare blood type to save the life of his passion (Julie Delpy).The weird and overrated "The Air that I Breath" uses four tales  named "Happiness", "Pleasure", "Sorrow", "Love" - that entwines characters and situations around the powerful and omnipresent gangster Fingers.
PLUS, you've seen Andy Garcia in this exact same role at least a dozen times before.What makes a good film like this?
Emile Hirsch("Into The Wild") is particularly good as the young mafioso douche bag, Sarah Michele Gellar revises her Krista Now "Southland Tales" porn star character in to the tragic pop star Trista, Forest Whitaker plays an awkward accountant in over his head, Andy Garcia is as always a gangster(if a more vulnerable and desperate one than usual), Brendan Fraser is a stern faced thug who can see the future sometimes, and Kevin Bacon is a doctor trying to save the love of his life, his best friends wife played by Julie Delpy(who has the good sense to stay in a coma throughout the weakest portions of the movie).I respect the ambition of the project and enjoyed certain parts, and though part of me wants to like it, over all the emotional peaks and valleys just became flat, and predictable after awhile.
This 2008 movie actually makes the interconnecting contrivances of the 2005 omnibus film seem all the more plausible with an overstuffed storyline that hinges on an ancient Chinese proverb that breaks life down into four emotional cornerstones - happiness, pleasure, sorrow, and love.
The problem is that Lee is so caught up in his concept that the resulting screenplay (co-written with Bob DeRosa) feels like it's in a constant spin cycle of increasingly preposterous situations, all for the sake of illustrating how their paths are inextricably linked to each other.Lacking the confident finesse of obvious role model Robert Altman (think "Nashville" or "Short Cuts" as comparative works), Lee goes so far as subdividing the movie into four discrete chapters.
screen time.That's saved money!Lets get that black guy who won the Oscar..what was his name..oh yeah..Whitaker.OK, we need a mob guy so lets hire Andy Garcia...and...oh yeah..get me that guy from "Crash", B.Fraser.We can't make a Crash movie without him!Then we need a spoiled pop star character, something like Britney...get me that Buffy chick, she'll do the job.Then we'll make a story based on a Chinese proverb with stuff like love, happiness, sorrow and pleasure so the audience would have something to think about.And may be they wont notice that the plot is a complete mess...ha ha ha!!!But I'll rate this fair.
This just goes to show you that anything is possible and there is a desperate need for some good story lines, and if you are a writer there is a chance that your movie could get made into a Hollywood Film.
There seems to be a trend recently where,somehow,good to great actors wind up in god-awful films-has the price of monkey placentae gone up or somethin ?Residuals petered out?bored?In this category,two standout examples would be Harsh Times (makes Splinter look like Training Day) and this piece of crap-Forest Whittaker?Julie Delpy?Andy Garcia(Oceans series notwithstanding)?the always likable Brendan Fraser?I thought it would be at least a fun/enjoyable 90 mins:but nope,truly horrible.
Based on the old Chinese saying that moody lighting,a decent soundtrack&meaningless violence will lull viewers into a false sense of entertainment,this non-sequitur of a "thriller" could have been an interesting short film,or a great music video for some European dance DJ,or even the video equivalent of the kitten-on-a-branch "hang in there,baby!"poster for aspiring actors/directors/writers,as it shows that not only do good actors do bad movies,but bad movies get made,so why won't yours?If your looking for offbeat/moody thrillers with substance,checkout Underworld(1996),Lucky Number Slevin(if you haven't seen it already)or even the half good,half funny Tarantino ripoff,Things to do in Denver When you're dead-Island drinks!.
The tomato meter gave it just 10 percent  personally it should have been closer to 3 Below are just a few of the many comments from critics (and these were kind) Rex Reed: New York Observer - For rock-bottom nasty, with no social relevance, there is The Air I Breathe, a load of amateurish bilge so silly I thought I was watching a screening at Comedy Central.Carina Chocano: LA Times - stew of cheap irony, ponderous but meaningless allegory, violence and pretension, the movie is all borrowed style and calculated pandering.
Years ago this would've been new but the cross thread story lines of how the smallest things you do in your life can effect the outcome of others etc etc has been done so many times before and so much better.The film races from one situation to the next without building up any feeling for the characters involved to the point where when something happens where your supposed to concerned about you really don't care, all your concerned about is how it will effect the end of the film.Only Fraser and Garcia get a constant look in, one is cold and distant, the other you don't care for anyway, i was drawn by the list of people starring in this film, and was disappointed to feel that they'd done it for the paycheck and nothing else.
The background music that tried to convey all sort of emotions, but ended up being pretentious and out of place didn't help either.Bottom line: if not for the great cast, the movie would have sucked big time..
Similair to the movies such as Crash, 11:14, and Go, The air that I breathe also is told from different points of view.There are four stories told starting with Happiness (Forest Whitaker) who must find 50,000 dollars so Fingers (Andy Garcia) doesn't cut off his fingers or even kill him.
After the highly acclaimed film Crash (2004),the sub-genus of "interconnected stories by unique situations" experienced a boom.The Air I Breathe belongs to this sub-genus and,although it is not completely satisfactory,I found it interesting.Let's see the fails from the movie first.On many occasions,the screenplay believes it is more intelligent than what it really is,so there are moments which do not feel too natural.Plus,there are various moments which could have easily been deleted,because they do not add too much to the story.I would have preferred to see a less pretentious and more concise narrative.However,I liked this movie.It kept me entertained and interested,and the whole cast brings honest and credible performances.The ones who mostly stand out are Forest Whitaker and Kevin Bacon,by my humble point of view.The Air I Breathe is a good movie and although it is not memorable at all,it kept me entertained while I was watching it.If I had to compare it to other movies from this sub-genus,I liked it more than the forced (and overrated) Babel,but less than 11 : 14,which I still think it's the best one from this niche,for the fact that the story is the most compact and ingenious one.I recommend The Air I Breathe with the warning that you do not have to expect something special..
Some people claim this movie is a copy of "Pulp Fiction" I don't really think that is the case and the cross thread story line works pretty well although there really isn't much character development in each segment.
This movie is well worth your time...I loved that it flowed together 3 stories into 1 seamless movie and in doing so left me wondering exactly what to expect next.I have probably seen 75% of all the American movies made in the last 20 years and am willing to say that this movie stood out in a way few do.In fact this is the first time I have actually commented on a movie on IMDb,that in itself tells you that it is something of a rarity.The acting was Superb,the cast almost perfect and the plot was actually believable in a far off way.All in all I would give it a 9/10 because perfection is often sought and seldom reached..
the cast is great i really liked Brendan Frasers performance he plays a great street tough, and Forest Whitaker was really fun to watch in the beginning of the film, Andy Garcia and Emile Hirsch are great too.
Released on video in 2008 and overlooked by critics and the public this includes powerful performances by Brendan Fraser as a serious actor in a hardened but mystical, quietly loud role as a muscleman for a crime boss, together with Forest Whitaker, Sarah Michelle Geller, and Andy Garcia offer strong supporting performances while Kevin Bacon seems somehow under-utilized in the script.
When I started watching "The Air I Breathe", I knew nothing about it, let alone about the Chinese proverb that life consists of happiness, pleasure, sorrow and love.
There is Happiness (Forest Whitaker), who accidentally gets in debt to Fingers; Pleasure (Brendan Fraser), who can foresee the future of people whom he meets; Sorrow (Sarah Michelle Gellar), a pop singer indebted to Fingers to the point where her manager sells him her contract; and Love (Kevin Bacon), a physician whose unknown links to the other characters might help him in life.While I didn't understand the title, I should say that I liked the movie.
Novice director Jieho Lee has done a very good job in presenting a visually appealing and consistently interesting multi-layered interpretation of an ancient Chinese proverb dividing life into four emotions: Pleasure, Sorrow, Love and Happiness.Forest Whitaker's story - Happiness - opens the film, and is one of the film's weaker links.
The film across the board is visually effective, also loved Fraser's sometimes misleading (for the character) flashes of the future.Overall, this is a very strong first effort from a talented director who hopefully can produce more great dramas, even though this movie wasn't as much of a success as it should've been.
Until you have experienced it all, you haven't lived fully.As a gist of the story, our protagonists represent the four emotions, Whitaker (Happiness), Fraser (Pleasure), Gellar (Sorrow), Bacon (Love).
It has a very interesting story and a very convincing and well developed plot based on an ancient Chinese proverb that breaks life down into four emotional cornerstones: happiness, pleasure, sorrow and love.
A businessman (Whitaker) bets his life on a horse race; a gangster (Fraser) sees the future; a pop star (Gellar) falls prey to a crime boss (Garcia); a doctor (Bacon) must save the love of his life.
A businessman (Whitaker) bets his life on a horse race; a gangster (Fraser) sees the future; a pop star (Gellar) falls prey to a crime boss (Garcia); a doctor (Bacon) must save the love of his life.
The cast is formed by all-star actors, Brendan Frasier delivers an outstanding performance as a mobster who can see the future, Sarah Michelle Gellar's role as a singer that apparently is happy but lives in a deep sadness was very good and convincing, Forest Whitaker excellent as always, Andy Garcia as a cold heart gangster is amazing, Kevin Bacon's performance is great as a doctor capable of doing anything to save a life and Emile Hirsch was also very convincing and even funny at some moments.
The fact that he didn't is a pity because the standalone story lines are intriguing enough without being muddled in with such a gratuitous and improbable intertwining plot involving a bag of stolen money.I know 'The Air I Breathe' is highly concerned with the Chinese proverb about happiness, pleasure, sorrow and love.
I like any film that tries to be different & this movie gives it a good go, I love the whole interlinked cause and effect premise the film is built around & for once even felt this tittle was actually substance over style as it did not try to take the viewer any deeper into the characters or story than absolutely necessary, Brendon Frasiers performance was great, i was so glad to see him playing a more serious role than normal.
They are Happinness (Forest Whitaker), Sorrow (Sarah Michelle Gellar), Love (Kevin Bacon) and Pleasure (Brendan Fraser) but we can't positively say they really represent these values or look for them (but I guess we all do, in a way).
From this we meet new characters, and begin to see in more detail what they are like.Surrounding the life of someone nicknamed Fingers, an almost science fictional story unravels, telling a tale of coincidences, and nothing more.Being biased, I'm a fan of Sarah Michelle Gellar, and enjoy most of her work, and I found this an entertaining view, but the storyline was nothing more than a number of things.
This film was filled with clichés plot lines and events - with predictable outcomes from cartoon characters who are supposed to represent the four emotions: happiness, pleasure, sorrow and love.
I think it's becoming a cliché of sorts.What sets this movie apart, however, are two inappropriately hilarious scenes, both involving Sarah Michelle Gellar's character, namely SPOILER: Trista's father tap dancing to death and Trista's attempted suicide (I felt I'd been suddenly transported to a Harold Lloyd movie).I was very sad to see talent like Andy Garcia, Kevin Bacon, Julie Delpy and Forrest Whitaker wasted in this film..
THE AIR I BREATHE (2008) ** Kevin Bacon, Julie Delpy, Brendan Fraser, Andy Garcia, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Emile Hirsch, Forest Whitaker, Clark Gregg, Kelly Hu, Taylor Nichols, John Ho. Odd yet somewhat engaging interlinking character by fate set of four vignettes involving Happiness, Pleasure, Sorrow and Love in Los Angeles has echoes of "Crash" and "Twenty Bucks".
The movie breaks down human emotions into four cornerstones; Happiness (Forest Whitaker), Pleasure (Brendan Fraser), Sorrow (Sarah Michelle Gellar), and Love (Kevin Bacon).