OXYGEN
Reviewed by Harvey Karten Unapix Films Director: Richard Shepard Writer: Richard Shepard Cast: Maura Tierney, Adrien Brody, James Naughton, Terry Kinney, Laila Robins, Paul Calderon, Dylan Baker
Few people could deny that the best way to die is in your sleep, painlessly, at a healthy old age. But alas, we're built to experience pain, and death inevitably comes to some at a slow pace and with great anguish. Think of the plight of the 217 folks on that Egyptair that swooped down like a stone near Nantucket, then took off for a few moments, finally to break apart in midair. Think as well as that executive who was kidnapped a year or so ago, buried alive, and ransomed. His rescuers were too late to save him. The very fear of being mistakenly put under ground while we still have a pulse must drive many a person to choose cremation.
"Oxygen," a gripping thriller about burial alive, is written and directed by Richard Shepard, whose 1992 caper comedy "The Linguini Incident" reflected the fascination he still has with Harry Houdini. Though the movie involves an adrenalin- rushing car chase and a scene that looks like something out of "The French Connection," this is anything but the usual cops and robbers melodrama but is rather an effective and taut psychological thriller. Its premise, that cops and bad guys sometimes share the same evil inclinations, is given believable cinematic dimensions because of a especially good performances by Maura Tierney as a cop with a history of emotionally sick behavior and Adrien Brody as the sharp- witted 25-year-old psychopath who has her number--and not just the one on her badge.
Shepard develops the dauntless character of Madeline (Maura Tierney) and her relationship with her cop husband Tim (Terry Kinney) early on as the two sit on a New York City subway train. When Madeline spots a face across her that belongs to a wanted criminal, she takes off after the man despite the plea of her husband that she's off duty. A far more challenging nemesis is to greet her shortly thereafter after Harry (Adrien Brody) kidnaps Frances Hannon (Laila Robins) and buries her live body with about 24 hours of air in a Poughkeepsie cemetery, ostensibly to demand ransom from Frances's wealthy husband Clarke (James Naughton). We soon learn that money--not even one million dollars' worth of it--is the psycho's real goal. Harry is in it for the game.
Recalling David Fincher's classic police drama "Seven," an unsettling psychological drama about a serial killer out to punish perps of the seven deadly sins, and that director's The Game," which lacks his previous film's violence but makes up for it in mean-spiritedness--Shepard's drama does not wallow in human depravity. Shepard chooses instead to exhibit much of the perversion through the verbal interchange between cop and killer. The two prove to be in a way one of a kind though not nearly in the same degree. Part of the story could well have been put on the stage as a deadly dialogue while the remainder lends itself to the full cinematic treatment--a car chase, a couple of burial scenes, a race with a petty gunman. The only scene that does not work involves a stagy monologue by an FBI agent (Dylan Baker) about what happens to a convicted murderer who is given a lethal injection. (That New York State, in which the crime has taken place, has not performed an execution in decades and is likely to sentence this psycho to a life term at best is overlooked.)
New York City looks good, from the moneyed streets that finds Frances on an afternoon stroll with her dog to the tunnels and byways around Grand Central Station, and photographer Sarah Cawley's work is given a splendidly spooky score by Rolfe Kent. Adrien Brody, recently on the cover of umpteen magazines, continues to be a rising star, nicely playing a guy who is both charmer and monster, while Maura Tierney is his match as a woman determined to rid society of his evil without necessarily exorcising her own inner demons.
Not Rated. Running Time: 95 minutes. (C) 1999 Harvey Karten
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