To me, this movie is perfection.

Just perfect...

A Masterpiece!

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

What a pleasant surprise for a (mostly) video-release movie. I checked it out due to Maura Tierney, who is so pretty and such a good actress. I think she would have been great in feature films, but I suppose her looks are more girl-next-door pretty, instead of supermodel pretty. She does very well here with an obviously damaged character. But then the film has Adrien Brody, from before his Oscar win, looking impossibly young, chewing the scenery with extreme gusto. Also Terry Kinney, playing his patented damaged cop. Sure, the film has some flaws, a few plot holes, and some odd minor characters. But for what it is, it is well worth a look.

Maura Tierney plays a tough New York cop with a secret life — she drinks too much and, though married, has a secret lover who burns her with cigarettes. Adrien Brody plays a sick pup of a kidnapper who has grabbed a middle-aged socialite and put her in an airless underground box to speed up the ransom. Oh, and he thinks he's some kind of reincarnation of Harry Houdini.Thus begins "Oxygen," a low budget made-for-Cinemax thriller that, I think, far exceeds expectations. First of all, Tierney, who very much reminds me of Lily Taylor, and Brody, who is impossibly young here, don't just chew up the scenery. They own this movie and make it their b*tch.At first, I was worried the movie would cave and ....MAJOR SPOILER... reveal that the husband was in on the snatch. Not.END OF SPOILERThis movie has bigger fish to fry and I was totally gratified that it went down dark places where cop and kidnapper realized that, on some level, they shared certain things. The two have a late scene in an interrogation room where they deliver volcanic performances.But once this psycho-thriller stuff is set aside, the movie comes to a swift ending. But right up to the end, you cannot predict what's coming next. Magicians, like Houdini, have things up their sleeve.Some terrific set pieces include a foot chase through a subway train in Steadi-Cam and a car chase in downtown NYC that is, though modest by "French Connection" standards, is still pretty ill.And, of course, there's the gritty and atmospheric NYC backdrop. The Twin Towers still stood tall when this came out in 1999.

**SPOILERS** Really bizarre crime thriller about this mentally unbalanced kook who believes himself to be the reincarnation of legendary escape artist Harry Houdini. This concentration camp survivor looking like individual goes by the name, no big surprise here, of Harry played by a emaciated looking skin and bones, a body that's perfect in escaping from straight-jackets and handcuffs, Adrien Brody.Together with his partner in crime Greg "Handsome" Evens, Michael Henderson, Harry kidnaps both Frances Hannon, Laila Robins, and her pet Pooh,played by Duke the Dog, as she was out walking him outside her luxury apartment house one afternoon in Midtown Manhattan. Held for one million dollars in ransom money Harry demands from Frances' millionaire art collector husband Clark, James Naughton, that if he doesn't get the cash by 6:00 Am the next morning she'll be dead; Dying from suffocation by being buried alive in some unknown location outside the city limits.The movie starts to get really strange when NYPD lady Det. Madeline "Maddy" Foster, Maura Tierney, is put on the case. With the police and Det. Foster casing out the money drop at the Queens Cemetery, where Harry Houdini just happens to be buried, Harry-the Psycho-leaves himself wide open to be captured by walking right into the trap that the police set for him. After a French Connection style car case thorough the city Harry is finally captured and put into police custody. It's then when we finally realize what exactly Harry's motives in kidnapping Frances, and her pet pooch, really were! They turned out to be just as crazy and unpredictable as he is!We also get to see Det. Foster's dark and secret life as a S&M freak that she's been keeping from her boss in the NYPD as well as husband Capt. Tim Foster, Terry Kinney. This strange and destructive lifestyle is quickly picked up by, who's very obviously into S&M himself, Det. Foster's captive Harry! With that knowledge in mind Harry does everything he can to get under Det. Foster's skin making her job, in finding the buried alive France's Hannon and her Pooch, much harder then it already is.***SPOILER ALERT*** We soon get to find out just that the not all there upstairs Harry really wanted to get himself caught in order to prove that he, like his hero Harry Houdini, can escape from any situation he finds himself in. Like being locked up in a jail cell in a New York City police station! Harry also uses his knowledge of Let. Foster's hang ups, as being into S&M, to cause her to lose her cool by hinting to her hubby Capt. Tim what a crazy freak he's married too. In the end Harry like most nut-cases like himself overplayed his hand in thinking that he's, not the NYPD, in control of what's going on in the movie. That leads to Harry ending up just where he put Frances, in a pine box, with him not worried about suffocating to death because of lack of oxygen because by then he wouldn't really need it anyway!P.S Earlier in the film there's a big chase scenes under the Brooklyn West-End elevated subway line that starts at the 62nd Steet station. It's that very same subway station where the exciting car chase in the film "The French Connection" ended with NYPD Det. Popeye Doyle gunning down his attempted assassin Frog #2 after chasing him down, after he derailed the hijacked subway train that he commandeered, and trapping him there!

Warning this is an awful review so if you want to watch the movie skip to some one who wrote a good review or who liked the movie. Still reading? Here is how I would get through this piece of junk. What I did was get some work out and leave the pig rolling on in the background. I worried that the my work on my laptop might have suffered but I watched the pig and answered emails even with this diversion I still hated it. It was a study in futility. Bad Characters. Lifeless and unbelievable acting I mean truly awful. I feel bad for the folks who saw it in the theaters.OK so it had some great stars I liked looking at the film faces so I blame the director on this pig--Cut together like a story that never made sense to the director and if the editor convinced him to run it backwards maybe they could have saved the pig. The story line is a wanna be "Seven" With Brad Pitt. this so called female cop is boring.Again Don't blame the actors blame the director--He stunk this one up but good. In the end the stupid thing ends with the woman being saved and who cares. Watch it while your doing something else like waxing your car.