Movie Review: Air (2015)

Synopsis: Sometime in the near future, a biochemical weapon incident has wiped out most of the planet and left the air unbreathable. Bauer and Cartwright are among the few survivors and are in charge of maintaining a makeshift facility designed to house cryogenically frozen scientists until the air outside is breathable again. They are given two hours every six months to complete their tasks before returning to their sleep chambers. However, when Cartwright's chamber catches on fire, the men realize one of them will die if they don't find an alternative.

Who's in it? The movie stars Norman Reedus, Djimon Hounsou and Sandrine Holt.

Review: We finally had an evening that wasn't centered around my daughter's theater rehearsals and since it was reasonably early but raining outside, my wife and I found another movie to watch. She's a big Norman Reedus fan so when I came across Air on one of our movie channels, I chose it. 

Even my Norman Reedus-loving wife thought this was a bad movie.

I'll start out by saying the premise was decent. It set up a scenario that could create a good psychological drama while also adding a bit of a claustrophobic feel to it. I will also go a bit further and say both Reedus and Hounsou did an OK job. Their characters, Bauer (Reedus) and Cartwright (Hounsou) were believable and had some interesting personality traits, including Cartwright's habit of imagining his cryogenically frozen wife, Abby (Holt) was standing by him and talking to him.

The main problem is this film is just dull. It's a 95-minute movie that has a story that could have easily been told in 30 minutes. The rest is just dragged-out scenes and filler. Even the movie's climax, with the two men fighting over who would be the one to die, just seemed to lack energy, as though the two actors were getting bored too.

Ultimately, I think this movie just needed more than what it had. An unknown creature lurking outside despite the impossibility of anything surviving, for example, might have helped. Or maybe more of a mystery/a suggestion there is someone else awake inside the bunker and intentionally trying to sabotage it. At minimum, it wouldn't have made the movie worse.

Final Opinion: Again, it's a good premise and the actors did a good job with limited material. It's just one of those movies that probably looked better on paper than it did on the screen.

My Grade: D

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