It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Starring Adrien Brody and Maura Tierney this little thriller has some good ideas but thoroughly fails to correctly utilize them.It tells the story of a cop facing her demons while getting pulled into a case where a millionaires wife has been kidnapped and buried alive. The kidnappers are demanding cash for her location, but is everything as it seems?Though I don't consider Brody a competent actor he is suitably evil here and plays the part well. Lead Tierney however is a passable actress with a real likeability fact, sadly she seems to be stuck with one single facial expression in every scene of every role she has ever taken. If I had to describe it I'd say the look of a woman who just witnessed her cat pee in her handbag 2 minutes before she's due to go out.What lets the movie down the most is the weak sub-plot, it just simply isn't needed and takes the movie in directions it simply shouldn't have gone down. Due to this the actual plot feels watered down and not given 100% of the attention (Which it should have had).Oxygen isn't terrible, it's just decent ideas in the hands of poor writers.The Good:Cast are competentCouple of good ideasThe Bad:Sub-plot damages the filmShould have been longerThings I Learnt From This Movie:I don't like Adrien Brodys faceA cat may have peed in Maura Tierneys handbag

**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!

That's the kind of movie you watch without too high expectations and then it totally blows you away, and you can't turn it off, and at the end you wish you could know what's going to happen now. The story is not really Award-worthy - young, brilliant criminal buries the wife of a rich man to get some money, and then he gets interrogated by a female cop. But the actors are just great - Adrien Brody shows his evil face and you got really scared of him, and Maura Tierney... We know that she can play, we saw it a thousand times at ER, but the role of the depressive, drinking cop seems to fit her absolutely perfect. You just have to watch her throwing her life away, getting pulled in that turmoil of herself deeper with every minute. You want to save her, but you know, even if you had the possibility to get to know her in real life, you couldn't, because in a sick way it fascinates you to just watch. And the chemistry between her and Brody is amazing - after the first meeting of both you are not able to turn this movie out. I loved it, it's my favorite movie, and whoever appreciates the talent of Maura Tierney, you will love it too...

This is a pretty fair "neo-noir" presentation, which I'd missed hearing about during the nine years since its release - but found in my paper's local-edition weekly t.v. listings. They only gave it 1-1/2*'s, but noticing that Adrien Brody and Maura Tierney were in the cast, I decided to take a look. One of the best aspects of this flick is the character each represents - two of the most weirdly fascinating, this side of Dennis Hopper and his companions "Blue Velvet," or the cult classic Rory Calhoun opus, "Motel Hell." Brody as the youthful, sort of nerdy-yet-wicked, braces-wearing, nefarious villain; and Tierney as the competent, dedicated, tough detective, with her strange compulsive, secretive nocturnal predilections, sort of a "masochistic savant." Perhaps not great, and with some contrasting moments. Sometimes the cops here were more realistic and "low-key" than in most of this type of movie fare, and at others were the types of doophuses we see regularly, enforcing the law, in these flicks.All-in-all, a good 7* presentation, and not a bad way to spend the two hours' viewing.As a sort of imaginary "sub-plot" I couldn't help visualizing from early-on, I was hoping that Brody and Tierney might meet-up at some point - the confrontation between the quintessential sadist and masochist, respectively. I thought of dialog between them, replicating a joke I once heard: the masochist says to the sadist, "Hit me!" (or, alternatively, "Hurt me!"). The sadist replies, "NO!!" (When they finally met in the interrogation room, there were a couple of occasions when I thought this just might occur.)