John Q

Nick Cassavetes, son of pioneering indie director John Cassavetes, may have had good intentions for this social issue film dealing with the deplorable state of health care in America but that hardly excuses such a  preachily tendentious, turgidly sentimentalized and frankly ludicrously improbable film.

Denzel Washington plays John Q. Archibald, a Chicago factory worker whose apparently healthy 9 year-old  son suddenly collapses during a Little League game. It turns out that the boy has a serious heart and requires a transplant. John finds out that because of various cost-cutting deals between his employer and its insurance company, the latter will only pay a fraction of the $250,000 the hospital requires to do the operation.  Pressured by his wife, Denise (Kimberly Elise), John takes the over the Emergency Department at gunpoint in order to force their cardiologist Dr. Turner (James Woods), to carry out the operation.

If writer James Kearns has a seemingly unstoppable appetite for plot clichés Cassavetes delivers them in breathtakingly hackneyed style. From the opening that establishes the straitened financial situation of blue color workers in general and John Q in particular to the triumphal ending the film takes the premise of Dog Day Afternoon (1975) and dumbs it down into a populist tract with devices and characters that we have seen in innumerable other films. The unconvincing plot in its most staggeringly improbable idea actually has Dr Turner agreeing to do a heart transplant single-handedly in the Emergency room, putting John’s heart into his son after the former commits suicide. But, believe me, that’s only the silliest of many silly things about this film.

Washington, almost needless to say, dignifies the shoddy material but the rest of the strong cast including Robert Duvall, James Woods, Anne Heche and Ray Liotta all play two-dimensional  characters. To make a film about an important issue like public heath care is commendable. To make it this badly is unforgivable. 

 

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