Inhale: Review By harveycritic

INHALE

IFC Films

Reviewed for CompuServe by Harvey Karten

Grade: B+

Directed By: Baltasar Kormákur

Written By: Walter A. Doty, John Clafin, story by Christian Escarío

Cast: Dermot Mulroney, Diane Kruger, Sam Shepard, Vincent Perez, Rosanna Arquette, Jordi Mollá

Screened at: Review 2, NYC, 9/23/10

Opens: October 22, 2010

In the bad old days when New Yorkers seeking divorces had to fudge an adultery situation, there were few other options. One would be to go to Reno, Nevada, and spend six weeks there establishing "residency." Another was to go to Juarez, Mexico, just over the border from El Paso, Texas, and get a decree the following day that would be recognized throughout the U.S. There was considerable traffic then from the U.S. to Mexico, but now the situation is reversed. Americans avoid Juarez, because there exists in that border town a plague of drug-related murders. Now the traffic in drugs goes the other way, a brisk commerce from Juarez to the U.S. While we in the U.S. condemn the rampant murder in places like Juarez, we fail to blame ourselves. It is we, the Americans who are fond of hard drugs, who are in effect causing the bleak situation south of the border.

There is another way that Americans with money are using Mexico illegally to sustain our lifestyles, though this applies to relatively few of us. If you're on a list for an organ transplant, you may have to wait months or years, and will likely die before your name comes to the top of the list to receive a pair of lungs, a heart, or a liver. One moneyed couple in Baltasar Kormákur's "Inhale," a well-known prosecutor in Santa Fe named Paul Stanton (Dermot Mulroney) and his wife Diane (Diane Kruger), have a young daughter, Chloe (Mia Stallard) who has a rare, degenerative disease requiring a double-lung transplant, pronto, as she is in Stage IV. The organ donor list is long: too few organs, too many sick people. Paul, with the full cooperation of his wife Diane, travels from Santa Fe to Juarez looking for a Dr. Navarro who has a reputation for providing organs to Americans who can scrounge up $200,000, or so he hears from his friend James Harrison (Sam Shepard), a candidate for New Mexico governor. Though aware that the city is dangerous, he could not have anticipated being beaten to a pulp and held at gunpoint not only by adults but by a street-wise twelve-year-old kid who turns out (for money, of course), to help him reach this Dr. Navarro, who seems never to be around.

"Inhale" is that rare crime thriller that raises moral questions, questions that Paul and Diane have to sift through in making decisions about their daughter's treatment. When Paul discovers that the organs he seeks and for which he is willing to pay will cost him big but, more important will involve a moral choice-one that would put his daughter's life in the balance-we in the audience will likely ponder what we would do if we were put into the same situation.

Dermot Mulroney looks particularly manly with his close-cut, graying hair, a fellow with enough charisma that we in the theater seats will hang on every word. He receives able assistance from a cast of Spanish-speaking Americans photographed wholly within the state of New Mexico by Ottar Gudnason, the sharp dialogue penned by Walter Doty and John Clafin from a story by Christian Escario. The film is grainy, presumably to give the feeling of a doc*mentary shot with hidden cameras, though this style, however relevant to the scene, becomes annoying. Director Kormákur's best-known previous work, "Reykjavik 101," is from another world, one involving a 30-year-old man who lives with his mother on welfare, watches porn, and has an affair with a lesbian. "Inhale" is the kind of effective thriller that will have its audience talking not necessarily about the movie but about the entire subject of organ transplantation, a discussion that could branch out to our thinking about the ways that rich countries exploit the poor by buying their organs, by using them as surrogate mothers, even on the way stem cells can be acquired as a shady business of embryo sales.

Unrated. 83 minutes. © 2010 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online