Major manipulation...
Roger Ebert
wisely said of this film...'It is so earnest, so
overwrought and so wildly implausible that it
begs to be parodied. I agree with its message--
that the richest nation in history should be
able to afford national health insurance--but
the message is pounded in with such fevered
melodrama, it's as slanted and manipulative as
your average political commercial.'
This film gets an A+ for message but an F for
delivery!
Denzel Washington gives the only solid
performance in the film and drags this lame
material out of the gutter onto a somewhat
respectable plain. I am sure this entire project
sounded great in the planning stages.
This drama has its moments but it is all too
transparent in an effort to make us cry.
I
guess this major metropolitan hospital has about
5 employees (The doctor, the nurse, the security
guard, the new girl, and the trainee
physician... how convenient that there is one of
each.) and 6 patients (The comedian, the
pregnant woman, the Latino lady who doesn't
speak English, the rebel... etc... can you get a
more clichéd group of movie characters?)???
Adding to the cliché-fest, outside the hospital
we have a typical hostage negotiator and a
publicity hungry police chief who does nothing
but make trouble... ugh.
What's with that digital read-out of the son's
blood pressure??? Do we really need a beeping
countdown clock on his life, as if he is a bomb
ticking down to zero? Surely the audience is
capable of understanding the urgency without
resorting to an arbitrary reading on a
machine... it plays like the odometer in the
1996 hit 'Speed' where it can't go below 50
or... BOOM!
I love it when, in all the movies of this ilk,
the super-duper expert sharp-shooting sniper
misses the ridiculously easy mark and only
grazes the target in the arm or shoulder... that
is soooo realistic!
©
Written by TC Candler
Richard
Propes' Comment
Subsequent viewing has revealed I must have been
on acid during the first viewing to have put
this film in the B range...Re-evaluation has
caused a drastic drop of its grade. I agree with
an NYC observation...the incidents in this film
deal with subjects that are too "real life" to
be treated lightly or as fantasy. This film had
strong potential but doesn't live up to it.
Jacob
Hall's Comment
n/a
