John Q. (Infinifilm Edition)
by Nick Cassavetes
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DVD details
Actor: Anne Heche, Denzel Washington, Eddie Griffin, James Woods, Robert DuvallDirector: Nick Cassavetes
Brand: NEW Line Home Video
Producer: Michael De Luca
Producer: Richard Saperstein
Producer: Avram Butch Kaplan
Writer: James Kearns
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 4.0; English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 4.0
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 112 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2002-07-16
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: New Line Home Video
Product features:
- TESTED OK
- 2002 DATE ON THIS DVD
DVD Reviews of John Q. (Infinifilm Edition)
DVD Review: Begs us: Make our broken system worse
Summary: 3 Stars
The acting in this film is excellent, there is no question about that.
John Q. Archibald (Denzel Washington) is a factory worker whose hours have been cut back. His family is always struggling and his car has been repossessed for lack of payment. He always promises his wife (Kimberly Elise) he will take care of things. That never seems to happen.
But then their son Mike (Daniel E. Smith) drops, unconscious, after hitting a home run at a baseball game. At Hope Memorial Hospital, heart specialist Dr. Raymond Turner (James Wood) informs the shocked parents that their son needs a heart transplant, and their health insurance has denied the procedure. They should make him as comfortable as possible and prepare for the worst, he says. Mike is going to die.
John does not believe this is possible. He goes to his company benefits department, which then tells him that indeed, the HMO will not cover the surgery.
And here's the factual rub. It is illegal to change a family's health insurance plan without informing them of the changes that have been implemented. But in this plot line, John Q.'s insurance has been changed from full coverage to $22,000 in total (or thereabouts), since he is no longer working full hours. However, John Archibald was never notified. Families are required to be offered full coverage under COBRA provisions, and cannot be automatically changed from full health coverage to virtually none without having been fully informed.
So while it makes for great drama, this film is based on a false premise. There is no way that John Q. Archibald could have lost full health coverage without knowing it.
From this point, the grieving Dad takes his story to a seemingly sympathetic pressman, who in fact is only interested in a scoop that will make his career---not ticking off his editors with another sob story about a bad situation that no one can easily address.
So John and his wife sell everything they have that isn't nailed down, and raise $6,000 to pay their son's uncovered hospital bills. By now he has been ill for longer than their meager policy will cover---even without the surgery. But the funds are inadequate and the cruel hospital administrator plans on releasing their son Mike. The surgery has not been approved, his insurance is used up, and he's going to die.
John's wife tells him to "Do Something." This time, John breaks his usual do-nothing pattern and more than succeeds---via criminal actions, albeit actions with which any loving parent can empathize.
John goes to the Hope hospital emergency room with a concealed handgun. He takes hostage all the emergency room patients---a drunk driver and his injured girlfriend, a pregnant woman, a mother and her child, doctors, nurses and other staff on duty. After several hours of accomplishing nothing, John informs the police and hospital administrators that he will begin killing the hostages if his son is not placed on the transplant list immediately.
Now, that insensitive pressman, who did nothing before, is hot on the hottest story of the year. He runs a live feed into the emergency room and broadcasts a telephone conversation in which the hospital administrator informs John Archibald that Mike is going on the transplant list, after all. She's faking. The Police Chief (Liotta) asked her to go along just to save lives. But they are now trapped in their own lie, which the public has seen. Their gooses are cooked.
What happens next is all as inconceivable as the initial premise---that John's family health insurance plan was canceled without his knowledge or consent, before he was offered an opportunity to extend full coverage by paying himself.
It all makes for good drama, a tearjerker, and superb acting. John Archibald becomes an unlikely hero, as he demands that all the other patients are treated for free, and chief police negotiator Frank Grimes (Robert Duvall) thwarts the Police Chief's election year ploy to make headlines by sending in a sniper.
Unfortunately, the story line is completely implausible, and dangerously misleading. I'm therefore giving this movie only three stars.
In effect it's propaganda supporting national health insurance. However, the national health plans elsewhere---in Great Britain and Canada, among other places---leave more people waiting to die than in the U.S. They're denied treatment or benefits for lack of funds, facilities or physicians. Even socialized medicine still needs to allocate resources. Neither emotion nor family love have anything to do with how those resources get allocated. The most likely to benefit are treated. Expensive and unproven procedures are not used. And tens of thousands of people have died---waiting.
Sure, U.S. health care is broken. Insurance is too costly and hard to come by. However, foreign experience has already proven that nationalized health care would only make the broken U.S. health care system worse.
Description of John Q. (Infinifilm Edition)
Academy Award winner Denzel Washington stars in this powerful drama about a father who takes extreme measures to save his son's life when his insurance company refuses to cover his heart transplant surgery.DVD Features:
Audio Commentary
DVD ROM Features
DVD ROM exclusive web site
Deleted Scenes
Documentaries
Theatrical Trailer
It's impossible to walk away from John Q. without thinking about the film that could have been. The pathetic state of health care in the U.S. and the desperate behavior it engenders is not only worthy but edgy material; no doubt director Nick Cassavetes (She's So Lovely) and Denzel Washington (as well as Robert Duvall, Ray Liotta, James Woods, and Anne Heche) were drawn to the provocative pitch. The only snag is that John Q. has about as much edge as an after-school special. Washington plays John Quincy Archibald, a hard-working factory worker whose house stands to be repossessed and whose lovely wife (Kimberly Elise) is at her wits' end. When his extremely cute son collapses while rounding the bases in a Little League game, things go from bad to worse. John Q. takes a downtown Chicago emergency room hostage when he learns that the heart transplant his son needs won't be performed because his health care doesn't cover it. The action-drama that ensues--replete with one-liners, stilted debate, inept snipers, and multiple references to O.J. Simpson's white Bronco--is so littered with clichés that the issues, timely ones, get lost in a crescendo of melodrama. --Fionn Meade
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