Am ancient Chinese proverb contends that all human experience is linked by four emotions: Happiness, pleasure, sorrow and love. In The Air I Breathe, novice director/co-writer Jieho Lee uses that aphorism as a springboard to explore the connectedness of several noir archetypes mired in crisis. It's an ambitious movie, and occasionally an ingenious one, but such attributes don't entirely redeem this exercise in pomposity.

The flick is divided into four vignettes, with each illustrating one of the four core emotions. In "Happiness," a mousy stockbroker played by Forest Whitaker makes a play for big money when he overhears some colleagues talking about a rigged horse race. Instead, the sure thing loses and leaves the hapless man owing $50,000 to a gangster named Fingers (Andy Garcia), so-called because he takes the digits of gamblers who don't pay up. Since the stockbroker is something of a numbskull -- there are quite of few of them in The Air I Breathe -- he decides to rob a bank.

Fingers' top henchman turns up in "Pleasure." Here, Brendan Fraser portrays the unnamed goon, a brooding soul cursed/blessed with the gift of clairvoyance. He loses that sight after an encounter involving Fingers' bratty nephew (Emile Hirsch), and shortly thereafter becomes intrigued by an up-and-coming singer, Trista (Sarah Michelle Gellar), whose future he cannot see.

"Sorrow" picks up the tale of that pop tart. Fingers, who evidently has his fingers in everything, takes over the woman's contract because of a gambling debt owed by her manager. The formerly clairvoyant henchman, whom we'll call "Pleasure," helps Trista hide out after she refuses to work for Fingers, who roughs her up accordingly.

Finally, "Love" features an ER doctor (Kevin Bacon) frantically trying to help save the love of his life, played by Julie Delpy, who happens to be married to his best friend (Clark Gregg). She needs a blood transfusion after being bitten by a super-deadly Russell's viper -- OK, forget for a minute that antivenom, not a transfusion, is what would save her life -- but the woman has an extremely rare blood type. As fate would have it, and there is a boxcar's worth of fate in The Air I Breathe, Trista shares the blood type.

Like such films as Crash and Babel, The Air I Breathe riffs on coincidences that link characters and the notion that we are all connected. Unlike those motion pictures, however, Lee and co-writer Bob DeRosa don't offer us compelling people so much as they give us cogs in a sometimes torturously clever narrative. The movie's pervasive fatalism, coupled with an interlocking story structure that would make M.C. Escher green with envy, keeps the characters at arm's length.

The cast is a knockout -- a particularly astounding lineup for a first-time filmmaker, as a matter of fact -- but the actors are stifled by Lee's maneuvering of them as puppets. The overriding feeling is exhaustion, the story mired in scenes of violence and tragedy so overwrought as to be laughable. What can you say when an actual visual motif involves people getting smashed by cars?

The film's caffeinated direction does the cast no favors. With oversaturated colors and whiplash-inducing camera movement and quick edits, The Air I Breathe has style, no doubt about it, but it proves more distracting than enlightening.

Presented in 2.40:1 and enhanced for 16x9 television screens, the picture quality for The Air I Breathe is stunning. Details and lines are sharp, with colors rich and deep.

Viewers can choose Dolby Digital 5.1 or Dolby Digital Surround. Both are excellent, although the former track is obviously more aggressive and immersive. Optional subtitles are in Spanish and English for the hearing-impaired.

The most worthwhile extra is a commentary with Jieho Lee, Bob DeRosa, director of photography Walt Lloyd and editor Robert Hoffman. Their enthusiasm for the film might not totally translate to the viewer (at least it didn't in this reviewer's case), but the discussion is information-packed and often illuminating.

Four deleted scenes (aggregate length 5:05) don't add much; viewers can select "play all" or watch each one separately. Also included are a theatrical trailer and a little more than two minutes of outtakes.

The Air I Breathe is mean-spirited, pretentious, violent and bleak. Some clever narrative twists and a strong cast can't mask its suffocating ugliness.