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All-Reviews.com Movie/Video Review
John Q.
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  out of 4
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Review by Susan Granger
2 stars out of 4
Agitprop combines both agitation and propaganda in order to excite
public opinion - and that's the aim of this pro-national health insurance
melodrama. Denzel Washington plays John Q. Archibald, a hard-working family man
who's pushed to the limit when his 10 year-old son (Daniel E. Smith) collapses
during a Little League game and is rushed to Hope Memorial Hospital, where he's
told that only a heart transplant can save his boy's life. Neither the callow
cardiac surgeon (James Woods) not the cruel hospital administrator (Anne Heche)
will authorize the placing the child's name on the heart transplant recipient
list since John Q's HMO insurance won't cover the whopping $250,000 cost nor
will the muddled government bureaucracy. His distraught wife (Kimberly Elise)
begs, "Do something!" so John Q takes over the Emergency Room and holds hostages
until his son's name is placed on the heart transplant list. Then there's
friction between the hostage negotiator (Robert Duvall) and the over-zealous
police chief (Ray Liotta) about how to proceed. Meanwhile, sympathetic crowds
cry: "free health care for everyone." The script was written by James Kearns
back in 1993, when the Clintons were pushing universal health care, and it's
sympathetically directed by Nick Cassavetes, whose own infant daughter Sasha was
diagnosed with congestive heart disease and is now a candidate for a heart
transplant. Perhaps personal involvement made them blind to crude plot
loopholes - like hostages being left alone yet never thinking of escaping. Each
scene drags, underscoring the obvious, and sentiment is slathered on top. On the
Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "John Q" is a blatantly manipulative 5 as
newsreel clips of Gloria Allred, Bill Maher and Hillary Rodham Clinton emphasize
its simplistic agenda.
Copyright © 2002 Susan Granger
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