SnoopyStyle The movie breaks down human emotions into four cornerstones; Happiness (Forest Whitaker), Pleasure (Brendan Fraser), Sorrow (Sarah Michelle Gellar), and Love (Kevin Bacon). Meek bank clerk Happiness overhears 3 co-workers in the bathroom about a fixed horse race named Butterfly. He's fascinated by butterflies and bets $50k on the horse borrowing from gangster Fingers (Andy Garcia). The horse goes down in an accident. Fingers threatens to take his fingers if he doesn't pay in 2 weeks. Pleasure is his mysterious bank customer who breaks into his house and gives him a gun. He uses the gun to rob his bank and is killed. Pleasure is collecting for Fingers with Fingers' loud-mouth nephew Tony (Emile Hirsch) as his new partner. He has a special ability to get glimpses of other people's future. Fingers just got the management contract for Sorrow (stage name Trista) and asks him to look after her. Tony gets into a fight and Pleasure is severely beaten. He is brought into a hospital treated by Love. Love is trying to save his unrequited love Gina (Julie Delpy) who needs a rare blood type. She married his best friend Henry (Clark Gregg).There are a lot of great actors struggling to find their way in a disjointed story. The rotation of the various characters leaves the movie without much rooting interest. There are too many problems with this movie and Jieho Lee's directions don't have enough life. The story is too calculated and Andy Garcia is forced to overact too much. When Brendan Fraser's character dies, the movie loses the most compelling point. There's a nice wrap to the various story threads but I lost interest by then.

Tss5078 I really didn't expect to like this movie as much as I did, after all several critics had refereed to is as a tame re-packaging of Pulp Fiction. The film is broken up into four parts that are out of order, and the characters all do eventually interact, there is also a mafia angle to the film, but overall besides the way things were laid out, I didn't really draw much of a comparison to Pulp Fiction. The stories all involve these peoples interactions with the mob, but they're all for different reasons and all have different outcomes. Andy Garcia is the boss, of course, always the perfect choice for a gangster or ruthless leader, and you get from him what's expected. What isn't expected is the tremendous performance of Brendan Fraser. I am not a fan and have never really considered him anything but a mediocre comedic actor, but after seeing The Air I Breathe, my opinion of him was definitely swayed. While watching the pieces, I knew they would somehow come together, but the way it was done was completely unpredictable and really something to watch. The film had a huge cast, with a ton of cameos, and just as many twists and turns. What I was expecting was far different from what I saw and I was more than happy with the way the film was done. I think if the film had been done in the traditional model of storytelling, it wouldn't have had as big of an impact.

Desertman84 The Air I Breathe is the directorial film debut of Korean-American filmmaker Jieho Lee, who co-wrote the script with Bob DeRosa. In this powerful film, four very different people on the edge of desperation are unexpectedly linked by their destinies. A top-notch cast featuring Forest Whitaker, Andy Garcia, Kevin Bacon, Brendan Fraser, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Emile Hirsch unforgettably brings to life the stories of a clairvoyant gangster, a rising pop star, an unlikely bank robber and a doctor desperate to save the love of his life.The concept of the film is based on an ancient Chinese proverb that breaks life down into four emotional cornerstones – Happiness, Pleasure, Sorrow, and Love. The proverb speaks of these emotions, not as isolated fragments of feelings, but as elements that make up the whole of the human existence. Each of the four protagonists is based on one of the four emotions; and like the proverb their paths are inextricably linked to each other, akin to the Fingers of a hand.A powerful crime boss, Fingers, subtly controls the destinies of four people whose circumstances have brought them to a crossroads in their lives. A quiet business executive is told that an upcoming horse race has been rigged and bets everything he has on his belief that the story is true. A noted pop singer discovers her career is hanging in the balance when she's forced to sever ties with her manager. A doctor must set aside a physician's traditional guidelines when circumstances demand he treat the woman he loves after a serious accident. And a criminal has a powerful vision of the future, but can't decide if his premonitions are to be trusted. Every so often a crime drama with delusions of existential grandeur comes ambling down the pike. Sometimes a philosophically-inclined filmmaker strikes cinematic gold. If video director Jieho Lee's erratic debut falls short of that estimable mark, he can't be faulted for lack of ambition. It is a jumbled Independent production that accomplishes little save for the squandering of a talented cast,who themselves could not help the film reach its potential.Each story has its moments but it lacks an overarching vision.Added to that,a stew of cheap irony, ponderous but meaningless allegory, violence and pretension, the movie is all borrowed style and calculated pandering. It does, however, get more ludicrous by the minute.But inconsistent acting and clunky dialogue aside, it infuses conventional genre thrills with introspection to intermittently engaging effect.

andreea This is honestly one of the best comedies I saw this year. I kept complaining about Hollywood not having made a good comedy for years and there it is, I ran into this beauty, by accident. I need to admit that I was owned by the cover, Forest Whitaker, Andy Garcia, this must be good - I had my doubts about seeing a movie with Brandon Fraser (really lousy movies in the past) or Sarah Michelle Gellar (I don't consider her talented at all), I said come one, these two can not make Whitaker look bad, he is such an amazing actor.Oh well, it's not them that made Whitaker look bad, it's the whole movie. The acting was just as bad, but the story, oh the story, was so dull, incredibly unreal and maybe focused on 14 year old. It didn't make any sense. I kept asking myself all the time why is that guy doing that, is there any sense in this whole thing? Not to mention the fact that - the movie is made of 4 different stories - there is completely no connection whatsoever between the story. I could as well have taken 3 random people from the street and they would have been more related to each other than the people in this movie. The time sequence is completely screwed up, things happen in a completely unrelated order. I consider it painful to go into the story, but it really didn't make any sense, I found myself laughing out loud after the first 10 minutes and I continued to do so. I must admit that it was entertaining at least. Completely unbelievable, it's not only that I didn't care about the characters at all, as they were so badly built, but, after Whitaker got shot, I just wanted all to die: Garcia is a frustrated gangster, deciding to go straight, so he only beats up and kills his own people; Bacon is on speed the whole movie, going about like a maniac; Fraser wants to look depressed and mysterious, a character with a touch of darkness who, apparently, falls in love and turns good but he succeeds to look like he just had a bad meal in all the important scenes and Gellar, oh she tries to act! She tries to look frightened, to look hurt or whatever human emotions, oh well she succeeds to look like she is faking acting, a spoiled kid who got a role in a movie.Well, you can watch it if you want to have a laugh. For any other consideration, do not let the distribution full you, Whitaker made a good role, but he was really lonely in this one.