Director: Christian Cantamessa
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Run Time: 95 min.
The first foray into film by The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman is not a big-screen adaptation of his wildly popular zombie series, nor is it any of his other comic book properties (although many of those are being turned into television shows).
Air, produced by Kirkman’s production company, Skybound Entertainment, and written and directed by Christian Cantamessa, is a close-quarters sci-fi flick taking place in a future where Earth’s breathable air has been depleted and what’s left of humanity has been put in sleep tanks, hoping to wake up in a world that is once again livable.
The film stars Norman Reedus and Djimon Hounsou as Bauer and Cartwright, two outpost technicians tasked with maintaining the facility and replenishing the sleep beds with needed fluids. The two men sleep for six months, work for two hours, then go back to sleep for another half a year (which, upon reflection, sounds like a dream job to me).
Of course, as with most science-fiction films of this ilk, things go terribly, terribly wrong after one of their sleep beds catches fire and is no longer usable. Now the two must work together to come up with a solution before asphyxiating due to lack of oxygen.
As someone who has a soft spot for containment thrillers, I found the first act of Air to be quite promising. I was afraid the plot was going to head down the tried-and-true path of Person A and Person B fighting each other, instead of working together to solve the problem. At first this didn’t happen. Then it did.
What begins as a semi-suspenseful race against the clock devolves into a lackluster series of skirmishes between the two men, ultimately resulting in an outcome that’s a predictable letdown. It nearly redeems itself several times throughout the 95-minute runtime, but it never commits to giving us something new or different in the end.
An added annoyance was the addition of Sandrine Holt’s character of Abby, a figment of Cartwright’s imagination whose fundamental role could really have been scrapped and replaced with some exposition and strategic clue dropping. More time spent with the two men struggling to find a solution to their grave circumstance or exploring the mystery of what happened in a nearby outpost would have made for a richer story.
Visually, there’s not much at play here, as most of the film takes place within the tight corridors and passageways of the outpost, but everything had a satisfyingly worn look, letting us know these guys have already been at this for quite some time.
Despite an interesting initial concept, Air fails to capitalize on its promising premise and delivers a mediocre science-fiction tale that is all out of breath.
