When she’s not hosting her own talk show, Academy-Award winner Jennifer Hudson still finds time to star in movies. A few years ago, she was rightfully nominated for an Oscar for her haunting performance as Aretha Franklin — need I say more? She’s back with another leading role in a major motion picture, but unfortunately ‘Breathe’ just doesn’t hit as hard. Not that it’s lacking in cast — Common (‘Silo’), Milla Jovovich (‘Resident Evil’), Sam Worthington (‘Avatar’) and Quvenzhané Wallis (‘Beasts of the Southern Wild’) also star.
Jovovich has been consistently great in film over the years following her career-making performance in ‘The Fifth Element,’ but this isn’t one of them. Both Hudson and Jovovich are giving their best here, but their male counterparts Common and Sam Worthington are arguably underused, even if the latter Aussie actor does go a bit unhinged by the third act. Oh well.
Common has really showcased his acting abilities lately. He was comically hardcore in ‘John Wick: Chapter 2,’ especially during that final shootout opposite Keanu Reeves’ Wick while they’re running through public spaces — who could forget it? More recently, his villainous turn in Apple TV+ hit series ‘Silo’ was one of the highlights of season one. So it is kind of unfortunate that here he only features prominently during the first act or so, but then again I get why director Stefon Bristol wanted to start things off with such talent bangin’. Common plays Darius, a conflicted father figure navigating a conflicted Earth that no longer wants its inhabitants on its surface because — among other reasons — oxygen is apparently not an abundant resource up here anymore in our future dystopian universe. Oof.
So Darius brings his wife Maya (Hudson) and teenage daughter Zora (Wallis) underground, where they can trick themselves into believing they have a view of the beach thanks to some kind of digital generation or something — think Desmond’s underground living experience in ABC’s beloved show ‘Lost.’ When the movie begins, it is revealed that Darius has already been hit hard by someone close to him dying from this world’s failures around them. He is losing hope and needs to go topside again for fresh air or whatever.
As young Zora, Wallis provides occasional voiceover narrations throughout ‘Breathe’ that may even remind some cinephiles of her intentionally childish voiceover work done in her breakout feature film ‘Beasts of the Southern Wild’ — another movie which, unfortunately for all involved here, was much better than this one. Later on she would go on to do an underwhelming reimagining of Annie alongside Jamie Foxx. But don’t get me wrong: Wallis is still very good in ‘Breathe,’ especially once Tess (Jovovich) and Lucas (Worthington) come knocking on her character’s door…
One of the greatest episodes ever made for television series “The Twilight Zone” features a young Robert Redford playing “Death” (twist!) as an injured police officer who knocks insistently on an old woman’s door; she refuses to let him in because she knows her time has come. In ‘Breathe,’ Maya tries yelling away two randos named Tess (Jovovich) and Lucas (Worthington). By this point Darius has already gone topside so it’s just the ladies down there fendin’ for themselves.
Maya is a sharp-tongued individual, but this just represents another way the movie falls short. Obviously a PG-13 was desired out of the editing room instead of an R-rated film, so multiple times Maya says “mother-freaking” (like when Tess is trying to get into Maya’s underground fortress) when she could have said any number of more realistic-sounding alternatives. It begs the question why they’d want to soften up the language here when, at this point in time, R-rated movies certainly aren’t afraid to make a killing at the box office.
With Worthington fresh off such critically acclaimed projects as Avatar: The Way of Water and Under the Banner of Heaven — both among his best work — it’s no surprise that he brings his A-game as Lucas grows increasingly rambunctious during the fortress break-in. Jovovich, on the other hand, is a disappointment. She’s done plenty of bad-assery on screen before but comes off too reserved and morally torn in her Tess role — sometimes to the point where we’re like “jeez, just dust off that assault rifle already and start taking names,” though not at each other through Hudson/ Wallis’ familial turmoil; we want them all alive by the end!
No matter what happens here at the end there’s an easy setup for a sequel — but don’t expect one. Missed opportunities and too-contained feeling throughout first go-around make it hard for us not to start drifting towards Children of Men or Blade Runner (both cited recently by Bristol as inspirations behind Breathe), among other post-apocalyptic films with better execution promises than this Capstone Global/ Warner Bros. release currently available in theaters & digital.