The Air I Breathe is a 2007 crime drama film and the directorial debut of Korean-American filmmaker Jieho Lee, who co-wrote the script with Bob DeRosa.
The film stars Kevin Bacon, Julie Delpy, Brendan Fraser, Andy Garcia, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Emile Hirsch, and Forest Whitaker.
The concept of the film is based on an ancient Chinese proverb that breaks life down into four emotional cornerstones – Happiness (Whitaker), Pleasure (Fraser), Sorrow (Gellar), and Love (Bacon).
The film received mainly negative reviews from critics, but some of the cast's performances were praised with Gellar, Garcia, and Whitaker being singled out.
Each of the elements of life is portrayed using four different people on the urban streets of Los Angeles, with Fingers (Garcia), a gangster, playing the part that intertwines all four individuals.
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.
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.
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.
In her sorrow that the baby, the one thing she has left of the man she loved will be lost, she sneaks out of her room and goes to the roof to jump off and commit suicide.
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.
I drew storyboards, had my musical inspiration and did research on every single actor I'd met down to their dog's name […] It was a difficult, lonely process.
The site's consensus reads "The Air I Breathe is a jumbled indie production that accomplishes little save for the squandering of a talented cast".
[11] In the New York Daily News, Jack Mathews thought the film had a "convoluted screenplay" that went "0-4" on its segments, despite the "fine" performances from the cast.
[12] Carina Chocano agreed that the cast was of a "high-caliber" and "disport[ed] themselves admirably" in the Los Angeles Times, with special mention to Andy Garcia and Forest Whitaker, but ultimately felt that "the whole thing looks like a pirated knockoff" with "all the aesthetic innovation of a disposable razor commercial", showcasing "meaningless allegory, violence and pretension" that gets "more ludicrous by the minute" and is "good for an occasional laugh".
[13] Annabelle Robertson from Crosswalk also praised the cast, particularly for Forest Whitaker and Sarah Michelle Gellar, but criticized it as an "off-kilter copycat of Crash with lesser production values".
[14] Writing for Variety, Ronnie Scheib also agreed that the cast was "stellar" but deemed the film to be "morosely pretentious" and questioned who it was for as it "strains both credulity and patience".
[15] The film was released on DVD and Blu-ray Disc on May 27, 2008 in the United States and includes a commentary, featurette, trailer and deleted scenes.