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Synopsis:
Every day, rising L.A. District Attorney Paul Chaney and his wife,
Diane, wait for word that there's a donor for their daughter, Chloe.
Diagnosed with a rare degenerative condition, Chloe is on a long list to
receive a rare double lung transplant. As her health worsens, Paul becomes
desperate to save his young child, so desperate that he'll risk everything
he has to organize an operation. When Paul learns of a Dr. Placer who
performs transplants in Tijuana, Mexico, he heads south in a frantic search
for the only man who may be able to save Chloe. But after arriving, he
realizes Dr. Placer's medical ring runs deep into a criminal underworld
where his patients aren't donors, they're victims.
With his career, his family, and his life on the line, Paul finds himself at
a critical crossroads: expose a massive, illegal harvesting operation and
save the lives of hundreds of children, or save the life of his daughter.
Production Notes:
Originally titled "Run for her Life". Shot in New Mexico during the summer
of 2008.
November 2009:
Echo Bridge Entertainment has picked up international rights from 26 Films
to Baltasar Kormakur's new Engish-language thriller
and will commence pre-sales this week at the
American Film Market. John
Claflin worked on Christian Escario's early draft of the screenplay. Los
Angeles-based 26 Films' Michelle Chydzik Sowa and Nathalie Marciano produced
the film and retain domestic rights in anticipation of a 2009 release.
"'Inhale' features all
the key elements of a box office success,'" Echo
Bridge's executive vice president Dan March said. "It's
a fast-paced thriller genre with stellar A-List cast and production team and
a critically acclaimed, up-and-coming director - the style of the film will
definitely
appeal to a broad audience of movie fans."
Reviews:
Joe Neumaier, NY Daily News:
As a tale of parental desperation and the cost of conscience, "Inhale" comes
from a thought-provoking place.
Gary Goldstein, LA Times:
It takes a while to get there, but "Inhale" eventually emerges as a tense
and morally complex thriller with a devastating twist.
David Noh, Film Journal:
The unusually strong supporting cast— Shepard, David Selby as another Santa
Fe bigwig, Rosanna Arquette as a sympathetic doctor, Jordi Molla as a Juarez
police chief and, especially, Vincent Perez as an enigmatic medico—adds
texture.
Rex Reed:
Soberly and responsibly, a small but significant film called Inhale,
starring the underrated, charismatic and terrifically accomplished Dermot
Mulroney, has arrived without fanfare or big-budget ad campaigns to capture
some well-deserved attention. It tackles the growing horror of organ
tourism–the search for illegal alternatives to long waiting lists for organ
transplants that never happen. According to this eye-opening dossier on the
subject, 15,000 sick people each year fall victim to organ trafficking by
organized crime. These surgeries are often performed under the eye of local
and national governments, health ministries and professional medical
associations, without the donor’s consent. You will go away with your heart
full and your eyes wide open.
Kirk Honeycutt, Hollywood Reporter:
"Inhale" is a well-written, shrewdly produced thriller, but the audience for
the film might be limited by the uncomfortable subject matter of illegal
organ harvesting.
Stephen Holden, NY Times:
“Inhale" is a shrill, feverish melodrama about illicit organ trafficking...
Filmed in a semi-documentary style, it fitfully aspires to moral
seriousness. It wants to be accepted as an exposé of a criminal enterprise
to which governments often turn a blind eye and as a “Babel”-like critique
of entitled Americans abroad who think their money can buy anything. At the
same time “Inhale” is a creepy medical thriller in the tradition of “Coma”.
Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal:
The director, Baltasar Kormákur, has a great gift for working with actors,
and a good cast to work with: Dermot Mulroney as Paul, the father of a child
whose lungs are failing; Diane Kruger as her mother, Diane; Jordi Mollà and
Vincent Perez as Mexicans of questionable probity... "Inhale" works not only
both sides of the border but both sides of the street, deploring the
practices of an illegal organ ring while exploiting its existence. You keep
rooting for the child to get a new pair of lungs, but all of the beatings,
betrayals and bitter ironies leave a bad taste in your head.
Harvey Karten, NY film critic:
“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 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 documentary shot with hidden cameras.
Michelle Orange, Movieline:
The intersection of morals and ethics opened up by medical advances is a
rich subject, as are the attendant, ironic pressures those advances put on
something more scarce than healthy kidneys: spiritual fortitude... Paul
[Mulroney] grows a conscience only when he has his nose rubbed in the
consequences of his pursuit, and he's eager to believe whatever the jaded
but possibly morally sound foreign "Doctors Without Nations" volunteer
(Vincent Perez) tells him. "We live in a war zone down here," he says. "What
is wrong with using dead people to save other lives?" It's a provocative
question; equally interesting is the invocation of the law of presumed
consent, which privileges a sort of moral logic over individual rights.
Ella Taylor, NPR:
A new thriller set in the international organ trafficking underworld puts a
hair-raising topical spin on a hoary old Hollywood question: How far would
you go to save the life of your child? Serviceably scripted by Walter Doty
and John Claflin from a story by Christian Escario, this nested-doll
thriller is efficiently directed by Icelandic actor-filmmaker Baltazar
Kormakur, who keeps us unsettled by adding freshly ambiguous new motivations
for players whose characters we thought we'd nailed.
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Cast:
Dermot
Mulroney.....Paul
Diane Kruger.....Diane
Rosanna Arquette.....Dr. Rubin
Vincent Perez.....Dr. Placer
Jordi Mollà......Aguilar
Sam Shepard.....James Harrison
Credits:
Directed
by.....Baltasar Kormakur
Written by.....Christian Escario, Baltasar Kormakur and
Michelle Chydzik-Sowa
Cinematography by.....Ottar Gudnason
Music by.....James Newton Howard
Production Companies: 26 Films and
Blue eyes Productions
International Sales: Echo Bridge
Entertainment
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