Oxygen - Jede Sekunde zählt

Starring Adrien Brody and Maura Tierney this little thriller has some good ideas but thoroughly fails to correctly utilize them.

It tells the story of a cop facing her demons while getting pulled into a case where a millionaires wife has been kidnapped and buried alive. The kidnappers are demanding cash for her location, but is everything as it seems?

Though I don't consider Brody a competent actor he is suitably evil here and plays the part well. Lead Tierney however is a passable actress with a real likeability fact, sadly she seems to be stuck with one single facial expression in every scene of every role she has ever taken. If I had to describe it I'd say the look of a woman who just witnessed her cat pee in her handbag 2 minutes before she's due to go out.

What lets the movie down the most is the weak sub-plot, it just simply isn't needed and takes the movie in directions it simply shouldn't have gone down. Due to this the actual plot feels watered down and not given 100% of the attention (Which it should have had).

Oxygen isn't terrible, it's just decent ideas in the hands of poor writers.

The Good:

Cast are competent

Couple of good ideas

The Bad:

Sub-plot damages the film

Should have been longer

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

I don't like Adrien Brodys face

A cat may have peed in Maura Tierneys handbag

Oxygen is a made for Cinemax thriller that does a one up on the thriller genre. This film is about the acting. It does what most other thrillers and films stay away from, the performances. A cop (Maura Tierney) with some very dark secrets is on the trail of a kidnapper (Adrien Brody) who buried a rich woman (Laila Robins) alive in the New York woods. This is a cat and mouse thriller from beginning to end. Adrien Brody is fantastic as a the sick, obsessed with Harry Houdini kidnapper. His acting is so real it's like he's not even trying. He's cunning, cleaver, smart and sick all at the same time. It's drama to the end. He really needs to be cast as the villain in more films. Put him in an action film and bring a whole new level to the word terrorist. Maura Tierney best know for her stint on Newsradio and Jim Carrey's ex-wife in Liar, Liar is just spectacular. She pulls off the cop with more than just problems. She beautiful, tough and confused. Throughout a lot of the film she's in tears. She can act and be tough. Get her some scripts, I wanna see this girl more often. The supporting cast is also great and each brings realism to their performances. Even though this film has dark characters and a dark subject matter, the film is very light looking. The brightness of the film will grab from the start. The colors stand out and are hardly missed. The film has a action flick look but it's a thriller. It's a different mix that works extremely well. Oxygen is an well acted thriller that will drain you. I highly recommend that all should run and check this one out. It's very high on the must see meter.

Roaming around Hollywood Video's New Releases, passing through theatre hits and theatre flops, and the the unending list of direct-to-video releases, I found this. The story seemed like a good one, and I was in a hurry for something, so I decided to give it a whirl.

The story is interesting. A middle-aged woman, Frances, is walking her dog when she is approached by what seems like a mild-mannered man. Before she knows it, he flashes a gun, dazes her by hitting her on the temple with it, and smuggles her into a car with a friend. They drive out to the woods somewhere, where she is terrified at the realization that they plan to bury her alive, holding her hostage for her rich husband's money. They put her in the box, the man's accomplice mercifully slipping her the flashlight, and bury her, leaving her to scream in terror.

Move to New York City, where a cop, Madeline, is made aware of the predicament. After witnessing a horrifying tape of Frances begging for help in the woods, the police must plot to catch the kidnappers and find the woman, all in twenty-four hours, or Frances will run out of oxygen and die.

I won't elaborate any more on the plot, only that this movie was surprisingly good. When I noticed it was from A-Pix, I groaned and figured I was in for an hour and a half of trash. But then I saw the breathtaking first few minutes, and I was shocked. If anything, those first three to five minutes are terrifying. As Frances is being buried, she is screaming and begging, struggling to survive, lying in that wooden box as the cover is being slipped on, with only a flashlight to depend upon. And even though the cops-pursuing-the-antagonist plotline is overused, it was quite tense, especially when you realize that there are only twenty-four hours to solve the mystery of where Frances is, and the kidnapper is not interested in talking, while his accomplice is nowhere to be found.

Yes, there are flaws. The script is quite bad, with some lines that I can't believe they wrote in. For some reason, I liked the FBI agent's monologue on the death penalty a la lethal injection, but a lot was pretty bad. Maura Tierney was somewhat convincing as the main cop, playing a B-movie's Clarice Starling. The actor who played Francis's husband was a bit campy. Adrian Brody, the kidnapper, was pretty good, if not a little tough to believe. The one who out-acted them all was Laila Robins, who played Francis. Her role is quite small, only because there's a lot of restrictions with laying in a box underground for the most of the movie. But she was so convincing. My favorite scene is when the flashlight is dying, and she is screaming and begging for it to live a little longer, because, as we learn early on, she is afraid of the dark. I swear, I felt like I was her, and I couldn't believe how empathetic I was of her. Her acting reminded me of Marylin Burn's stellar performance as Sally in "Texas Chainsaw Massacre." She conveyed the emotions of the situation very well. I think that's why I felt so bad for her.

Overall, I recommend finding this. No, it's not the best thing ever made, but it is very good, and quite intense. Check it out!

Good performances, especially from Adrien Brody as a psychotic sadistic killer with a Houdini obsession and Maura Tierney as a cop, make this film stand out. The story is good, but would have suffered in the hands of a less competent director and cast. This is a movie that depends a lot on performance to deliver, and it does. Some of the supporting cast could have been played by better actors, but they are serviceable and are mostly meant to occasionally prod the story along another notch. On the whole, the cast stays out of the way of Brody and Tierney, who are the whole show. It's definitely worth seeing, and another one of those films that seemingly came out of nowhere, as I never heard of it before. I like solid B movies, and this stands out as one of the best. Its obscurity helps to conceal its surprises, and it helps to be surprised with this movie. I gave it an 8 out of 10.

1st watched 3/31/2002 - 8 out of 10(Dir-Richard Shepard): Well-made thriller that is advertised by it's depiction of being buried alive and is actually much more than this. Tierney & Brody give wonderful performances in each of their roles and the direction is almost spotless. Very overlooked movie which deserves much more attention for how well it was done despite not working for a major movie company. I will be looking for more by Mr. Shepard whose direction really made this movie work as well as it did.