Breathe: Jennifer Hudson loves her profanity, especially the term ‘frick’. She shocked me when she holds a gun on someone and still uses this word instead. This, on the other hand, was probably the most immersion breaking detail in the movie.
Director Stefon Bristol, Breathe is set in a world ravaged by war where oxygen level is below the given amount which is recorded as enough for mankind to find breathable air within. Stepping Stones, 2019 Sailing Anthem lyrics.
Jennifer Hudson of, Respect, appears to shoulder some of the burdens as well leading Maya. She hides in the oxygen saturated fortress with her young child. However, her good heart is put to the test when two survivors, Tess of and Lucas of, seek her help. Non trust leads to villains.
Then, so-called shit happens, because it is too often said that extreme circumstances call for extreme solutions, and this is what happened here. It is a simple yet fun premise, one that can very easily be used to create tension. The characters, in a non-bunker setting, are always at the edge of asphyxiation.
They make every breath, heh, worth it, always an undertone of leisurely increasing peril, when a character starts running about and talking because it was full of air and they expend too much of it. Most of the film’s problems would be solved in due time and it was evident that had Breathe made use of such tension and managed to defeat the said building blocks into other workable characters and scenarios it would be one decent thrill.
Somewhat unsurprisingly, Breathe fails to make good use of the interesting premise because the end result is excruciatingly lifeless. It’s always a puzzle given that in a scenario like this there’s hardly any petty available to make the characters workable.
More often than not a thriller does not spend too much time on development in terms of characterization as these are more of welcome distractions with one high willed scene after the other. But then there’s an overlapping problem: the problem that you cannot entirely eliminate the character.
I do not propose to cast too many aspersions on the picture for when the main overall trump of this family of principal characters is that they are a family. I am tired of films treating the fact that a family is a family as a reason for the audience to care, but again, there is no such time for development in a thriller of this type, so if it simply targets the bare minimum of audience engagement, I can deal with such a twaddle.
But what we have is something below that. Zora and Zora’s daughter have next to zero chemistry as well as credentials so her and her daughter’s performances are just that – no one remembers them. Not to mention any conflict they have is sometimes completely ignored, left behind, and oftentimes brought in a minute in the climax which leaves their arcs frustratingly disjointed. Just because you are focusing on ordinary main characters, it does not give an excuse to go easy on them, but that’s how this film sounds.
Things become even worse when we take a look at the villains in this case Tess and Lucas. Initially, It looks like there is going to be something about the morality of these two, which I am not saying is the case here. We can see them attempting to enter Maya’s bunker, knowing that she wants to get out of there, but not because they are looking to cause trouble.
It is interesting who in these conditions it is necessary to trust and who in these conditions it is possible to feel sorry for, and this is what somewhat entertained me for about the first half or so. However, without revealing too much, about the last third of the film goes down this path for a much easier, and in my view much more boring, villain. It makes the build up from earlier seem more pointless than anyone would have ever expected.
I’m also baffled by the acting. Jennifer Hudson’s approach has nothing new to offer, though if so, she still gets the work done. Milla Jovovich is trying to show some inner feelings, which is commendable, especially after she got typecast as an action-woman for the better part of the past ten years thanks to Resident Evil series.
But in reality, all those moments where she needs to be emotionally unstable and struggling come off as though she has forgotten her lines and is rather hysterically trying to recall every word. Sam Worthington casts even worse as he tends to just keep looking and acting mostly imitating a drunken state, delving into cartoonish territory even.
One last issue I take is with the audio. I am not a filmmaking specialist, but I do believe that at least one crew member should have been able to understand that since two thirds of the film one can barely see someone’s lips since everyone on the ship seems to wear oxygen masks all the time, having such thundering gasping sounds and oxygen masks on, it would be very complicated to hear what they are saying in the dialogue.
So even though the characters appeared undoubtedly sincere saying whatever they wanted to say, I am unable to hear any of it and it is something that noticeably took me away from the experience.
The problem with Breathe is not that it is riddled with negatives. It is that it does have any real positive. I wasn’t crucifying anyone over here, rather, there wasn’t really a part that made me want to stop watching, aside from parts toward the end.
But in case I did not have to write this review and somehow the power went off in the theater rather the middle of the movie was boring enough, I wouldn’t be loosing any sleepless nights. Others might put up with this in terms of how ‘bad’ it isn’t, but shema loch, making the audience apathetic to them instead of enraged is far much worse.
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