Oxygen

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.

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.

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.

1st watched 3/31/2002 - 8 out of 10(Dir-Richard Shepard): Well-made thriller that is advertised by it's depiction of being buried alive and is actually much more than this. Tierney & Brody give wonderful performances in each of their roles and the direction is almost spotless. Very overlooked movie which deserves much more attention for how well it was done despite not working for a major movie company. I will be looking for more by Mr. Shepard whose direction really made this movie work as well as it did.

... trite, hackneyed, and boring. Aside from excellent acting by Maura Tierney (wasted), and a very Anthony-Edwards-esque Terry Kinney, this movie is a waste of 90 minutes. From the dreadfully self-applauding monologues to the unbelievably wanna-be-Tarantino conversations, it's a non-stop tour of hackdom. Adrien Brody never convinces the viewer he's insane. The cops never sound like cops (check out the 2-3 minute monologue given by the "FBI guy" - Brody's wanna-be cool response of "nice monologue!" will have you rolling your eyes. This is dialogue verite?).

Much like Oprah fans, the plot holes are large and numerous. Tierney's character does nothing to try to hide her burn marks, but only the killer notices. Tierney's character does nothing to hide her alcoholism, but only her friend notices. Adrien Brody's character escapes in some seriously laughable situations (as a 25-year-old with braces, I can tell you the wire does not come out that easy - as an experienced magician, I can tell you that picking cuffs makes a lot of noise, and orthodontic wire is not strong enough for it). The final escape is the worst - how did Brody's character keep the gun on her while they both climbed through a small hole in the roof? How did he keep her quiet while he did all of this? How did the buried woman survive so long, and have the strength and presence of mind to attack him?

Possibly the worst thing about this movie is how clever the writer/director obviously thinks he is. Does he actually believe we care if the killer and the cop are "the same"? They're obviously not - and how many times can that line be recycled? Does he honestly believe he's drawing us in with the tepid, uninteresting cat-and-mouse dialogue? And what was up with the idiotic dirt-kicking scene? "You're finally free", croaks a dying Brody. Thankfully, by that point, so are we.

Dreadful, dreadful, dreadful. Skip it. 0/5 stars.