When director Nick Cassavetes went to work on John Q, I'm sure
his heart was in the right place. He accepted this job because, with his daughter Sasha on a donated organ recipient list, he felt a connection with the characters and situations presented in the movie.
Obviously, the subject matter stuck a resonant chord for others involved in the production, as well. The cast includes such notable names as Denzel Washington, Robert Duvall, and James Woods. Yet, for all of those good intentions, John Q turns out to be hopelessly mediocre - a poorly scripted, preachy fable that forgets about unfolding a coherent, believable story in its zeal to spread propaganda.
John Q tells the story of a man, John Archibald (Denzel Washington), who is having trouble making ends meet. Since his work week has been cut from 40 hours to 20 hours, he can't keep up on the family's car payments, and eventually losses the car. When his son, Mike, collapses on a baseball field and is diagnosed as needing a heart transplant, John is confident that things will be okay, because he has medical insurance. Unfortunately, it turns out that his Tier II coverage doesn't cover $250,000 operations. The hospital director, Rebecca Payne (Anne Heche), refuses to put Mike's name on the organ recipient list until John can cover the $75,000 down payment. The cardiologist, Dr. Turner (James Woods), claims that the matter is out of his hands. But John's wife, Denise (Kimberly Elise), screams at him that he has
to do something. So he does - he takes everyone in the hospital's emergency room hostage. When the police, led by the crusty negotiator Grimes (Robert Duvall) and the chief of police, Monroe (Ray Liotta), arrive, he presents his demand: he will release the hostages when his son has a new heart. Otherwise, he will start killing them. Oh yea, that's fair to the other thousands of people on the donor list.
John Q's underlying concept has a great deal of relevance in today's world, where the term "medical coverage" is rarely mentioned without an
accompanying, profane adjective. Yet Cassavetes and screenwriter James
Kearns take this important issue and make it the fulcrum of a story that is divorced from reality by so many contrivances that it's almost laughable. From the moment when John storms into the hospital and takes over, believability goes out the window. There is no way that a lone man, untrained in fighting and with only a small gun, could take over the wing of a hospital, hold off the entire Chicago police force, and turn into an instant folk hero while threatening to kill innocent people. But that's not all - we also get loads of corny dialogue and several pointless subplots. A power struggle develops between Grimes and Monroe, but this is just filler.
And there are feeble attempts to satirize media zeal in the person of a TV reporter who's as concerned with his appearance as with getting the story. Films like Die Hard and The Negotiator have offered similar subplots to better effect. Here, they're just an annoying form of background noise.
Speaking of annoying background noise - John Q's soundtrack, which features jarring instrumentals and at least one grossly out-of-place ballad, should have been replaced or re-edited at some point during the film's post-production phase. It's almost as if composer Aaron Zigman turned in his score without watching the movie. Normally, for me to notice it, a soundtrack has to be very good or very bad. Here, it's the latter case.
There are times when acting almost redeems this movie - almost, but not
quite. Denzel Washington is convincing as a desperate father who has run out of legal options and can think of no other alternative but to point a gun and hope no one calls his bluff. Robert Duvall has no trouble playing a veteran cop who probably loves the smell of napalm in the morning. Anne Heche and Ray Liotta don't test their ranges in their portrayals of dislikable individuals. James Woods offers an effective turn as a doctor caught between his oath and the system. Solid support is provided by Kimberly Elise as John's supportive wife and Daniel E. Smith as his dying son. There are no Oscar-worthy performances to be found here, but acting is not one of John Q's faults.
Aside from the sheer implausibility of the principal action, the film's most glaring weakness lies in its inability to state its case with any degree of subtlety. People, even those who agree with the political doctrine being espoused, don't like sermons. And that's precisely what John Q turns into - a two-hour attempt to indoctrinate viewers into believing that the current health care system is in desperate need of reform (to me, this seems self-evident). The movie isn't content to show the inadequacies of the system - it talks about them endlessly in speeches that would have been at home in a public service announcement. Not only is this tedious, it's unnecessary - the events happening to John are sufficient to illustrate the situation.
At its heart, John Q is a drama, but the movie frames several sections as action sequences, complete with artificially generated tension. There's a scene in which a sharpshooter climbs through the hospital's air conditioning ducts in order to get a shot at John. This is handled so badly (like something in a direct-to-cable B-movie thriller) that I found myself cringing. Sadly, that's the way I reacted to much of this movie - a good idea with noble intentions gone awry because of a poorly crafted screenplay and uneven direction. Next time Nick Cassavetes wants to tell a deeply personal story, he should rely on something that is less obviously manufactured by a connect-the-dots screenwriter.
his heart was in the right place. He accepted this job because, with his daughter Sasha on a donated organ recipient list, he felt a connection with the characters and situations presented in the movie.
Obviously, the subject matter stuck a resonant chord for others involved in the production, as well. The cast includes such notable names as Denzel Washington, Robert Duvall, and James Woods. Yet, for all of those good intentions, John Q turns out to be hopelessly mediocre - a poorly scripted, preachy fable that forgets about unfolding a coherent, believable story in its zeal to spread propaganda.
John Q tells the story of a man, John Archibald (Denzel Washington), who is having trouble making ends meet. Since his work week has been cut from 40 hours to 20 hours, he can't keep up on the family's car payments, and eventually losses the car. When his son, Mike, collapses on a baseball field and is diagnosed as needing a heart transplant, John is confident that things will be okay, because he has medical insurance. Unfortunately, it turns out that his Tier II coverage doesn't cover $250,000 operations. The hospital director, Rebecca Payne (Anne Heche), refuses to put Mike's name on the organ recipient list until John can cover the $75,000 down payment. The cardiologist, Dr. Turner (James Woods), claims that the matter is out of his hands. But John's wife, Denise (Kimberly Elise), screams at him that he has
to do something. So he does - he takes everyone in the hospital's emergency room hostage. When the police, led by the crusty negotiator Grimes (Robert Duvall) and the chief of police, Monroe (Ray Liotta), arrive, he presents his demand: he will release the hostages when his son has a new heart. Otherwise, he will start killing them. Oh yea, that's fair to the other thousands of people on the donor list.
John Q's underlying concept has a great deal of relevance in today's world, where the term "medical coverage" is rarely mentioned without an
accompanying, profane adjective. Yet Cassavetes and screenwriter James
Kearns take this important issue and make it the fulcrum of a story that is divorced from reality by so many contrivances that it's almost laughable. From the moment when John storms into the hospital and takes over, believability goes out the window. There is no way that a lone man, untrained in fighting and with only a small gun, could take over the wing of a hospital, hold off the entire Chicago police force, and turn into an instant folk hero while threatening to kill innocent people. But that's not all - we also get loads of corny dialogue and several pointless subplots. A power struggle develops between Grimes and Monroe, but this is just filler.
And there are feeble attempts to satirize media zeal in the person of a TV reporter who's as concerned with his appearance as with getting the story. Films like Die Hard and The Negotiator have offered similar subplots to better effect. Here, they're just an annoying form of background noise.
Speaking of annoying background noise - John Q's soundtrack, which features jarring instrumentals and at least one grossly out-of-place ballad, should have been replaced or re-edited at some point during the film's post-production phase. It's almost as if composer Aaron Zigman turned in his score without watching the movie. Normally, for me to notice it, a soundtrack has to be very good or very bad. Here, it's the latter case.
There are times when acting almost redeems this movie - almost, but not
quite. Denzel Washington is convincing as a desperate father who has run out of legal options and can think of no other alternative but to point a gun and hope no one calls his bluff. Robert Duvall has no trouble playing a veteran cop who probably loves the smell of napalm in the morning. Anne Heche and Ray Liotta don't test their ranges in their portrayals of dislikable individuals. James Woods offers an effective turn as a doctor caught between his oath and the system. Solid support is provided by Kimberly Elise as John's supportive wife and Daniel E. Smith as his dying son. There are no Oscar-worthy performances to be found here, but acting is not one of John Q's faults.
Aside from the sheer implausibility of the principal action, the film's most glaring weakness lies in its inability to state its case with any degree of subtlety. People, even those who agree with the political doctrine being espoused, don't like sermons. And that's precisely what John Q turns into - a two-hour attempt to indoctrinate viewers into believing that the current health care system is in desperate need of reform (to me, this seems self-evident). The movie isn't content to show the inadequacies of the system - it talks about them endlessly in speeches that would have been at home in a public service announcement. Not only is this tedious, it's unnecessary - the events happening to John are sufficient to illustrate the situation.
At its heart, John Q is a drama, but the movie frames several sections as action sequences, complete with artificially generated tension. There's a scene in which a sharpshooter climbs through the hospital's air conditioning ducts in order to get a shot at John. This is handled so badly (like something in a direct-to-cable B-movie thriller) that I found myself cringing. Sadly, that's the way I reacted to much of this movie - a good idea with noble intentions gone awry because of a poorly crafted screenplay and uneven direction. Next time Nick Cassavetes wants to tell a deeply personal story, he should rely on something that is less obviously manufactured by a connect-the-dots screenwriter.