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. |
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.
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." Dermot Mulroney on
working with Sam:
"The director of 'Inhale', Baltasar Kormakur, is a big
guy. He’s handsome with a powerful personality, and even he was a quailed a
little bit around Sam. Sam is a very forceful person. It’s funny to me
because I’m like, 'Sam, will you please,' and everybody else is, 'Yes, sir.
Right away, sir.' I think he’s just had it. It’s interesting because he’s
working a lot lately. If he doesn’t, I think he’d just live by himself in a
cabin and kick his dog. I think jobs get him out of his house, and he’s been
doing incredible work. He was great in 'Brothers'. That was really subtle
good work there. And in this, I think he’s fantastic. Great casting to have
that guy be tough and then have to just break and spill the beans. It was a
cool part for him." |
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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