Do Or Die?
Denzel Washington leads the cast that includes Robert Duvall, James Woods, and Anne Heche, along with several other actors. The story takes place in modern times and sees Denzel Washington, as John Quincy Archibald facing something many Americans are facing this moment: hard financial times. His wife Denise, played by Kimbery Elise, urges John to try harder to make ends meet but he’s having a hard time finding a second job and meanwhile his job at a local plant is seeing reduced hours. Meanwhile, their son Mike is in good health and spirits until one day during a little league game he collapses while running the bases.
This event changes their lives forever. Mike is rushed to the hospital by his parents and placed into the ICU where his life hangs in the balance. Anne Heche plays the director of the hospital James Woods is the head of the cardiology department. They have two layers of unfortunate news for the Archibald’s: first, their son is deathly sick with an enlarged heart and without a transplant, he may only have weeks to live. Secondly, the insurance coverage that John has isn’t nearly enough to help with the tremendous cost of the surgery. In fact, Mike isn’t even going to be placed on the organ donor list unless John and Denise can come out with tens of thousands of dollars in a hurry.
John resorts to selling everything and the local community helps with donations. After some $22,000 though, he’s told that Mike is going to be released from the hospital and basically sent home to die. John and Denise are of course distraught, so John decides he is going to plea with the hospital one more time. When this fails, he isolates James Woods’ character, Dr. Raymond Turner and takes him at gunpoint to the ER, which he takes completely hostage in a bid to get his son’s name on that transplant list.
Robert Duvall plays the police negotiator Lt. Frank Grimes. He and John open a dialog to try to work this out, but things get even more tense when the police try to take out John by sneaking in a single officer. John meanwhile has the doctors and nurses he has taken hostage tend to the patients and is able to everyone feeling somewhat calm. Mike is eventually placed on the list but his condition is rapidly declining. The entire situation becomes yet more dramatic until things come to a head and everything works out.
I thought the actors, especially Denzel, turned in great performances. There are several sad and nicely done scenes where you empathize with John and his family. At the same time, I thought the film tried too hard to be a ‘feel good’ movie and I thought it was ultimately hard to take the story seriously because of it. The media spectacle and the big crowd gathered outside the hospital that cheered John on just seems really hard to believe. Had this situation occurred in real life I just don’t think anyone, especially the hostages would have been so relaxed and indifferent about it as most of them seemed to be during the movie. Still, overall, the movie is worth a watch but I don’t see myself watching it again.
John Q on Blu-ray
The Blu-ray release of John Q looks and sounds great. The picture quality is sharp and vibrant with little to no grain or technical issues of any kind. It’s not a particularly flashy movie so it’s not something you will probably want to use as a demo to impress yourself or friends, but it looks great nonetheless. The Dolby TrueHD captures the audio of this dialogue driven film very well and I have no complaints about it. For extra features, there are several, including:
-Focus Points – You can enable this feature from the Special Features pop-up menu; when you do, during the film, a small icon will pop-up at which point if you press a button on your remote, you will be treated to some behind the scenes footage about that part of the film.
-Audio Commentary with the Director, Screenwriter, Producer, and Director of Photography
-Fact Track – I love these; this is another feature you can toggle from the pop-up menu that gives turns on pop-up facts about the film, while you watch.
-Fighting For Care – A thirty-five minute, SD feature about the difficulties in health care in getting organ donations and transplants.
-Behind the Scenes of John Q – A seventeen minute SD feature with interviews and behind the scenes footage. This was also on the DVD release I believe.
-Deleted and Alternate Scenes – Six scenes, totaling about twenty minutes (one scene is nine and half minutes), in HD. Each scene also has optional commentary from Director Nick Cassavetes.
-Theatrical Trailer – In HD
With that, let’s get to the summary…
