Air

Air – After chemical warfare makes the air poisonous and unbreathable, an elite group of humans are selected to be kept alive underground until life on the surface can resume. While these people are sleeping in stasis, engineers are woken up for a couple of hours once every 6 months in order to keep the facility working. Bauer and Cartwright work together at one such facility but with the equipment beginning to fail can they work together to survive until the next sleep cycle?

Air (2015) – Director: Christian Cantamessa

By Source (WP:NFCC#4), Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47553063

Rating: 12

Running Length: 95 mins

Starring: Norman Reedus, Djimon Hounsou, Sandrine Holt

Genre: Science Fiction, Thriller

REVIEW: ‘AIR’

Claustrophobic sci-fi is something that isn’t easy to pull off. The premise needs to be believable and the enclosed space needs to be big enough for everything to work while being small enough for characters to feel like they are living on top of each other without any viable means of escape. In ‘Air’, the premise is sound – chemical weapons having caused mass extinction on the planet’s surface – and the claustrophobia is tangible.

Ultimately, a movie like this lives or dies by its pacing which makes it unfortunate that pacing is the main issue with ‘Air’. Long lingering shots of enclosed corridors can help assert an atmosphere of boredom, loneliness and desperation but ‘Air’ stretches these slow, long scenes ad nauseam. Despite having a good story and short running time, every single one of the 95 minutes is felt, indicating that perhaps there isn’t enough material to fill them. The hallucinations that Cartwright has of a woman he cares for are bland and when things spiral out of control, the exciting moments are so fleeting that they aren’t enough to counter the plodding nature of the rest of the movie. The friendship between the men is never particularly convincing, much of the important expositional dialogue is skimmed over or mumbled and despite the acting abilities of Norman Reedus and Djimon Hounsou, the script is so contrived that it doesn’t allow the audience to relate to either character or truly feel their motivations, especially as the only humour is eye-rollingly juvenile.

What is interesting is that viewers are given no idea as to when the movie is set. The initial assumption would be sometime in the near future but the dated equipment suggests a more ’80s vibe, could this have been an alternative consequence of the Cold War? How long have they be down there and how long will they remain? With these questions unanswered, audiences are forced to solely focus on the present, knowing that the beginning of the next sleep cycle will essentially be the end of the movie (other than a potential epilogue). A better script, better direction and a couple more exciting moments would have made ‘Air’ a cult film for sci-fi buffs but its lack of punch makes it disappointingly dull.

CONTENT: IS ‘AIR’ SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN?

News reports are shown in quick snippets, reporters explain that chemical weapons have been used in a war and the situation gets increasingly desperate. The images show fires raging, explosions, and large-scale weapons being fired.

A character tries to distract another by putting a pornographic magazine in front of their face while they are concentrating on something.

A character hallucinates and sees a woman who talks to him, acting like his conscience. This leads him to do some good and bad things. It is made clear that she isn’t really there and although this character is mostly good-natured, the mental illness he displays due to his lonely situation could be a little disturbing for kids.

A character jokes that his friend is a ‘chronic masturbator’. Later, when hurting his hand badly, this character jokingly laments that he won’t be able to use it while using a crude hand gesture.

A character lies on a bed and is then hermetically sealed within a plastic surround. He calmly tell another character that something seems wrong and that the air is thin. Suddenly the surround shrinks around him, causing him to panic as he has no oxygen and is unable to move in order to help himself. He thrashes around but soon becomes still apart from a single few twitches. Another character appears and tries to help him

CAN I SEE A CLIP?

VERDICT: IS ‘AIR’ FOR KIDS?

Although ‘Air’ may be disappointing it’s perfectly watchable especially for those who enjoy a slow-burning, locked room style of storytelling. While the content isn’t overly strong and should be suitable for kids aged 8 and over, due to it having a slow, suspense-laden plot we feel it is likely to be too dull for under 12’s.

• Violence: 1/5 (one character threatens another with a gun and it is made clear that he will kill the other character if he is able. A character is attacked and injected with a dangerous substance)
• Emotional Distress: 2/5 (a character dies due to the actions of another, they are quickly resigned to their situation so while it is sad that this character dies, the emotional distress is minimal)
• Fear Factor: 3/5 (lots of suspense, particularly in the final third of the movie)
• Sexual Content: 2/5 (some brief shots of pornographic magazines and several jokes about masturbation)
• Bad Language: 3/5 (some moderate cursing, one strong word is used)
• Dialogue: 0/5
• Other Notes: Deals with themes of friendship, family, paranoia, trust, betrayal, mental illness, survival and sacrifice.

Words by Laura Record

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