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

This is funny

[WildBeast]

Complaining about the US healthcare system? You should take a look at the Canadian system. Around here patients die not because they don't have enough money but because they have to wait a year for a surgery. Some nurses are even refusing to work, others are getting sick. It's a freakin disaster.

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.

Re:This is funny

[invenustus]

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.

I hope you're trolling, but I fear you might actually be serious.

I had a quick look at this Fraser Institute's web site. It seems to me that they support:

• ending the war on drugs.
  
• ending censorship in Canadian media.
  
• halting corporate welfare.
  
• keeping government regulations out of cyberspace.

This sounds like a set of Your Rights Online articles!

It's easy to ignore the arguments that come from these groups when you characterize them as "right-wing" or "corporate apologists". My hometown newspaper likes to put Cato Institute articles in a special box marked "The Right Stuff - a forum for conservative opinion".

If someone's wrong, show me how they're wrong. Name-calling - i.e. "idiots" - doesn't prove a thing.

Your sig, however, is brilliant. I mean that. It says in seven words what I've been trying to tell politically-inclined people for years.

Re:Gimme gimme gimme

[nomadic]

Yes, you should. And every gun-toting, Ayn Rand-reading, welfare-bashing one of you would say the same thing if you needed one and couldn't afford the surgery. And anyone who says otherwise is lying.

Jon, you are wrong (no spoilage)

[acoustix]

I don't think this movie "bashes" the HMOs.

First off the father in the movie had insurance (or so he thought). The insurance that he thought he had was supposed to cover this type of surgery. Come to find out that since his working hours at the factory had been cut from Full time to part time his insurance policy had changed as well (although he was not notified of this).

He was also not notified that his company decided to change insurance carriers.

So, it looks to me like his company is partly to blame for not informing about his insurance coverage.

Geeky Movie "WORTH" watching

[night_flyer]

Just recieved my DVD of Mamoru Oshii AVALON by Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the shell, Patlabor) in the mail the other day, I have watched it twice in two days and will probably see it a few more times this week... it is that good.

The plot centers around a group of people that play an illegal virtual reality game in Poland called Avalon (similer to Unreal Tournament and other 3d shooters). A player can either form parties or go solo, people make a living playing this game. It seems there is a "glitch" in the program that once a player enters the "forbidden plains" they cannot reset (or get out of the game) and are stuck there till the mission is complete.

I cant get to much further into it without giving away plot devices but suffice it to say it is an intense movie.

The movie itself can be described as "live action" anime, with some outstanding computer effects. The language is Japanese AND Polish with English & Chinese subtitles, but there is very little talking.

This movie will leaving you scratching your head till your scalp bleeds!

NOTE: It's a little tricky to find how to activate the subtitles, as all the menus are in Japanese (its the upper right hand menu, select the selected option and then select option 2 on the next screen).

Go ahead mark this offtopic, but at least this movie was worth reviewing...

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...

Re:Gimme gimme gimme

[dillon_rinker]

Free hearts for everyone!

Boo! Boo!

Free hearts for some, tiny American flags for others!

Yay! Hooray!

(Don't blame me; I voted for Kodos.)

The US system is a waste of money

[DABANSHEE]

Actually you know that the US is the only nation in 'the West' that doesn't have a 'socialised' health system, & guess what? The US just so happens to have arguably the worst health system in the West too - its the most expensive health system in the world, both per capita, & as a percentage of GDP, plus in total too, even though 40 million Americans have no coverage what-so-ever.

That's the trouble with basing policy on ideaology, one loses flexibility.

Hence on balance, the most successful economies are the mixed economies, where they don't let themselves be restricted by ideaology & take policies from both the left & the right, depending on which is right for the job.

BTW, in other ways the US is a mixed economy - for example the US has a socialised highway system.

You see, compared with other sectors, demand for healthcare services are relative static in reaction to price - people do not get less sick just because prices go up. Consequently in a market based healthcare system like the US, relative speaking healthcare providers can charge what they want & mostly get away with it.

However in the rest of the OECD its different. Take the example of Canada. A couple of Years ago some doctors decided to opt out of the system & charge what they want, well the govt just said we won't pay them, & if patients wanted to see them they'd have to pay them themselves. Well what do you know, those doctors lost most of their business overnight & eventually they all gave in.

Here in Oz its similar, if doctors charge more than the schedule 'bulk billing' fee, its up to patients themselves to cover the balance. One can take out 'gap insurance', but insurers know if they covered the whole potential 'gap' doctors would be free to charge what they want, so even the insurers will only cover a proportion of the gap (a percentage of it, up to a certain maximum threshold). But because its much easier for doctors just to bulk bill the govt, rather than mail bills out & chase them up - where in the end they get a cheque from medicare (the govt agency that covers payements to healthcare providers) for the schedule fee bit & another cheque from an insurer that covers the insured part of the gap & then the balance in cash from the patient. Which means months of waiting because the patient has to 1st mail the bill to the govt healthcare agency to get the schedule fee cheque, then when they get it back they then mail it off to the insurer to get the 'part of the gap' cheque from them. So basically the govt makes it so inconvenient for either doctors or patients to go private, that the vast majority of both chose to go public, ie the doctor just bulk bills the govt & patients ddon't have to worry about bills at all.

Consequently in the rest of 'the West' healthcare costs are only about 8% of GDP, or something, while in the US its nearly about 15% & rising. As a percentage of GDP the discrepancy is even higher. Plus in the rest of 'the West' there's 100% coverage, while in the US, 40 million Americans have no coverage.

One standard for comparing health systems is life expectancies. M'nn "it appears all those countries with 'socialist health systems' have better life expectancy rates than the US". Ecen Cuba's almost matches the US's.

BTW, how often do you lobby the US govt to privatise its socialist highway system? Afterall the fall of the Soviet Union shows that socialism doesn't work, which means US highways are bound to be more efficient if they were all privacised & there were tollbooths on every entry ramp.

& imagine the efficencies that could come with increased competition, you could have a dozen different companies all operating different tollways between San Diego & LA. That would be real efficient. Afterall increasing choice always makes things better - look at the 60 TV channels, that's much better than just having BBC 1, 2 & 3 & a couple of token private channels like they have in the UK. Mind you how does that Pink Floyd song go? '40 channels of shit on the TV' or something?