Oxygen

I think this is a pretty good movie. Basically, Maura Tierney plays a detective who has some very big personal problems to deal with and gets sucked into a kidnapping case only to become the last hope the victim has.

I especially like the way Maura is cast as the leading role. Refreshingly, she is a real woman with very real problems. Most people probably cannot relate with the specific issues she has to deal with, but the one thing I was left with when the movie was over was that she was 100% believable. She's not some kind of "super" human like every other star in a good-guy vs. bad-guy movie. She's just a smart detective who manages to stay alive.

More articulate people than myself have said it all; but I'll have a go anyway :) Oxygen is a tightly paced and utterly watchable thriller about a female detective (Maura Tierney) on the trail of a psychopathic kidnapper (Adrian Brody) and his buried-alive victim, while fighting demons of her own. The 2 leads are both astonishing. Maura Tierney is SO beautiful and SO talented it's almost indecent :) She has such a thoughtful / intelligent face and completely captivated me with her role in Liar Liar. She's just as good in this movie too. Bruce Almighty might have been half decent if MS Tierney had played the role Jennifer Aniston so completely messed up!! Adrien Brody is another fantastically talented actor yet to get the 'star' status he deserves. He was brilliant in The Pianist and he's brilliant here too. His character was very very scarey. So. Well worth watching.

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

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.

In OXYGEN, Richard Shepard has refined his approach to character-driven crime thrillers first seen in his previous, also excellent film, MERCY. Armed with experience and a bigger budget, Shepard has wrested outstanding performances from Maura Tierney and Adrien Brody, in their best work to date. Both characters are quite believable, and their defects are gently extracted and displayed by the subtle script. There are no stereotypes or one-dimensional characters in the whole film.

This is not to say that this is some esoteric, art-house movie, suitable only for clove-smoking turtleneck-wearers. The action scenes are well-executed and edited. Camera work is very nice; the long Steadicam shot in the train is especially memorable. Tension holds on throughout, and even the asides (such as an FBI agent's humorous soliloquy about the death penalty) integrate well and don't distract.

I sure would like to see what Richard Shepard could do if given some Really Big Bucks.