John Q (2002)

His Review:

When John (Denzel Washington) is told that his son (Daniel E. Smith) is going to die due to an enlarged heart, he requests that his son receives the heart transplant the head of cardiology (James Woods) recommends, but the hospital tells him that his insurance won’t cover the procedure.  In order to get his son’s name on the transplant list, the hospital need a down payment of $75,000 which John doesn’t have.  John decides to gather as much money as he can, but he comes up short and the doctors want to discharge his son home to die.  When his wife (Kimberly Elise) tells him to do something, John decides to take the Emergency Room hostage in one last desperate attempt to save his son.

For starters, I’m an emergency room nurse and the only thing real about what they portray in John Q are the people on the waiting room complaining about who is next.  Having said that, the way that the hospital is shown as heartless, money hungry crooks is horribly incorrect.  It’s so bad that I almost didn’t want to watch the rest, but I did.  The second half of the movie, after John takes hostages, is when the movie gets better and creates suspense surrounding whether John and his son make it out of this alive.  Some movies drop the ball in movies like this when it comes to the end, and this movie could only end 1 way, and good thing for us, it went with that 1 perfect ending.  Not to say that this ending, or movie for that matter, is a quality ending, but it fits what “should” happen.  When this movie was over, I felt exhausted and depressed as the movie takes a toll on the viewer with its message and emotions.  It’s hard for me to recommend it to anyone however.  Co-starring Robert Duvall, Ray Liotta, Eddie Griffin, Shawn Hatosy, Kevin Connelly and Anne Hache.

6/10 Stars – Gets better as it goes, but not good enough to save itself in my opinion.

Click below for links to IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0251160/

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/john_q/