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John Q
**
Cinema Releases - April 26, 2002
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 15. 118
minutes. Directed by Nick Cassavetes. Written by James Kearns. Starring Denzel
Washington, Robert Duvall, James Woods, Anne Heche, Eddie Griffin, Kimberly
Elise, Shawn Hatosy, Ray Liotta, Ethan Suplee.
"John Q" is great for thirty-five
minutes, then drops into a dead zone and stays there for an hour and change.
It begs us to pay attention to a political issue but can't stay focused itself.
There's a moment in which Denzel Washington stops talking and takes out a
gun, and we can feel a rush of zombification take over as the movie switches
to autopilot.
Washington plays a blue-collar Chicago guy whose
steelworks are taking a hit from the recession. He's down to twenty hours
a week, and as the movie opens, his car is being repossessed. "It was either
this or the house," he muses. Not longer after this, Washington's son collapses
from heart failure at a little league game, and the hospital administrators,
played by James Woods and Anne Heche, declare that the kid will need a
transplant. Terrible, but not a problem, Washington thinks -- after all,
he's insured.
Unfortunately red tape has been tangled by greed
into an impenetrable nightmare. Washington's low hours at the plant have
caused his insurance policy to be converted into a partial coverage plan
that will only pay $20,000 -- he needs $250,000. He appeals to Social Security,
but one department won't cover him because he's not on welfare, others keep
shifting him around to different departments and the hospital won't foot
the bill because a heart transplant is technically an "elective option".
Washington tries to sell his possessions in order to raise cash, but the
hospital will discharge his son if he isn't put on a donor recipient list,
and an immediate $90,000 down payment is required to get on that
list.
Frustration drives Washington into pulling a gun
on Woods; he locks the doors of the emergency room and demands that his kid
be treated within the hour. From this point on, "John Q" is another retread
of the "Dog Day Afternoon" formula, with crowds gathering around the hospital,
cops appealing to Washington from across the street, hostages grudgingly
becoming sympathetic to their captor and a media circus
erupting.
It's not the formula that I mind so much -- the
more the movie adopts populism, the more chance it has to achieve wide
distribution and affect a mass audience. What bothers me is that spectacle
becomes more important than story. Robert Duvall appears as a grizzled old
hostage negotiator who plods around with artistic body language, Woods makes
speeches about the unfeasibility of Washington's position, Ray Liotta plays
the police chief who represents backstage politics and delivers such lines
as, "It's an election year, dammit! I can live with taking one bad guy out!"
Ultimately, "John Q" is a thriller about action, deadlines, ultimatums
and sweaty brows -- the important stuff is relegated to the background and
becomes a McGuffin.
The set-up of the movie is broad and melodramatic,
but nonetheless powerful -- Washington and his family are intelligent,
reasonable, hardworking people who get shut off by bureaucracy and do not
deserve it. I thought "John Q" was going to take off and generate a story
of forceful anger; the lazy development is a disappointment.
Should you see the movie? Perhaps. There are moments
of power here and there, and the filmmakers are correct in accepting the
lousy state of the American healthcare system as a given, rather than debating
the issue. If you have money, you can live; if you don't, well, sorry. We
all remember when President Clinton tried to tackle the HMO problem and corporate
America put an emphatic stop to his efforts. That showed him. Meanwhile people
are dying. In the UK we offer free healthcare but often find it impossible
to expend the resources. Americans have the resources but don't offer them.
That kind of arrangement can't last -- can it?
COPYRIGHT©
2002 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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