Movie Review: John Q

John Q is contemporary Hollywood's idea of an issue movie: preachiness hiding behind a superstar. The good news is that a major film studio is taking up a complex issue like health care, one of the worst messes in American life. The bad news is that the movie is so hypocritical, heavy-handed and gummed up with silly, sentimental and cliche-stuffed sub-plots that it undermines its own good intentions. Fortunately for the studio, Denzel Washington and Robert Duvall are always worth seeing. Spoilage warning: plot is discussed, not ending. And your own reviews are as welcome as mine.

The plot is pretty simple. Denzel Washington plays John Quincy Archibald, a beleaguered working class guy in Chicago whose hours at the factory have been reduced and whose car has just been repo'd. He is catching guff about money from his wife (Denise Archibald), and the couple has a cute and loving kid Mike (Daniel Smith) who collapses during a baseball game.

It turns out that Mike needs a heart transplant, which the nasty hospital administrator (Anne Heche) informs John will cost $250,000, an operation his insurance policy doesn't come close to covering. The Archibald's sell of nearly everything they own to try and raise the money to pay the hospital and the greedy, uncaring surgeon (James Woods) and as Mike slips closer to dying, John snaps and takes over the hospital emergency room.

Robert Duvall plays Lt. Frank Grimes, an aging hostage negotiator undermined by his idiot boss (Ray Liotta). Almost everybody in this movie is a cliche -- the uncaring administrator, the political and bumbling police chief, the saintly, too-good-to-be true John Archibald, whose solution to his very valid complaints about the American health care system -- a solution much endorsed by the movie -- is to get a gun and take over the emergency room while patients bleed and give birth. Even while holding hostages at gunpoint, Washington's character is noble, even saintly. Washington is a great actor and he is a likeable hero here, but the plot just takes too many loopy twists and turns. Everyone in the film is either a cartoon villain or a noble lifesaver really to preach about the evils of HMOs at the drop of a gun.

The best parts of the movie, not surprisingly, occur when Duvall and Washington are sparking off one another. But unaccountably, there are so many silly plot contortions that the power of that great pairing is lost. Director Nick Cassavetes and writer James Kearns twist their movie into a pretzel trying to deal with all of the potential racial, class and political sensibilities. To balance all the evil doctors, there are some wonderful ones.

To avoid the appearance of hitting racial issues too hard, Archibald's friends are all white. In addition to the stupid police chief (is any authority figure in America ever competent in a Hollywood movie?), there's a woman-beater and an airhead, vain TV reporter.

I won't give away the ending, but it's fun watching the moviemakers wrestle with a dilemma of their own making. The movie seems to be saying that the best way to deal with your insurer is to get a weapon and take some hostages. Unlike the heroes of Dog Day Afternoon, perhaps the classic modern hostage movie, John Archibald is saintly and noble enough to run for President. So what becomes of our Dad/kidnapper? You'll have to see the movie to find out. It's entertaining, and it's almost sure to be a big hit. But even a superstar can't mask a silly story.

Comments

Re:This is funny

[Black Rabbit]

That has more to do with the government's unwillingness to properly fund it, than whether or not it works. Every time there's a report about the state of Canadian healthcare, it seems to come from some right wing "thinktank"--why do they call them that?--that has a vested interest in bringing down the system, so they can put a for-profit system in its place.

Masankowski's recent report had connections with the Fraser Institute idiots, for instance. Roy Romanow's full report will be interesting once it's fully released. He has already said that the system is breaking down due to very insufficient government funding on all sides.

I fail to see how, in a system that has been pared to the bone and running probably about as efficiently as it's going to, how in the world introducing a profit motive, therefore slicing the pie ever further, is going to save money! Whatare they going to do, cut the salaries of the staff? This will just drive them south, as it has already done with many of the nurses.

I saw an interesting article in (I think) the Ottawa Citizen a few weeks ago. It suggested thatif Roy Romanow wanted to see what a for profit healthcare system looked like, he should look no further than the veterinary system thathe might use to take care of a family pet. The article went on to pint out many of the parallels between vetcare and our healthcare. I wish I could dig it up.

Wait a sec...

[wirefarm]

A poor guy's kid needs a heart transplant.
The heart transplant costs a QUARTER OF A MILLION DOLLARS.
The guy can't afford it.
The guy takes a gun and steals the procedure.
This makes him a hero?
...
I don't get it.

You know, in some countries, kids die because they can't afford food and clean water.
Oh, wait - this is an *American* kid - that makes this sort of thing OK - I see now...

Sort of makes me wish that they took the money that they used to make the movie and used it to buy food and heart transplants for people that need them rather than for mildly amusing a bunch of well-off people for 90 minutes.
(Yes, I believe that if you have the means to see this movie somehow, you are comparatively well-off, in the grand scheme of things.)

How about this - if you haven't seen the movie yet, *don't*.
Send $15 to UNICEF (or whoever) instead.

This movie strikes me as just another case of *talking* about doing good, rather than actually *doing* something good.

JMHO...