If ever there was a “crowd pleaser” of a movie, this is it. Everything about this movie is designed to get you to root for “John Q”, and you know what? You will. And that’s okay by me.
Denzel Washington plays John Q., a barely employed factory worker with a wife and son. At the outset of this movie, there is much care taken to let you know that despite their financial problems, this is a very close, very loving family. Their car gets repossessed, but there they are singing and laughing. Of course, things get a lot worse when the boy collapses on the baseball field. It’s an enlarged heart and there’s little hope other than a heart transplant. Enter the evil hospital administrator played by Anne Heche and the nearly evil chief of cardiology played by James Woods. Hovering over both of them is the master presence of evil, the dreaded HMO. John’s insurance won’t cover that operation and he needs a $75,000 down payment to get things going. John doesn’t have that kind of money, so as his son’s blood pressure continues to sink as he lay in a hospital bed, John is a man that knows that desperate times call for desperate measures. He simply locks down the hospital emergency room and takes hostages. Give my kid a heart or I’ll kill ‘em all. Like we believe that. They might as well have called this “St. John Q.” for all the evil intent John really has.
From there, it’s on to a national television audience as police negotiator Robert Duvall and pretty, smiling boy Chief of Police Ray Liotta try to end the siege. Given that they disagree on tactics and since Duvall is the go slow, avuncular type and Liotta is the “shoot first and ask questions later” type, who do you think wins there?
It must sound like I witnessed a “by the numbers”, predictable, boring movie. Well, that’s the beauty of “John Q” – you know what’s coming but it’s all still a pleasure to watch. Naturally, Denzel’s skilled acting comes in handy. I mean they set him up in that emergency room with a collection of stereotypes and he still pulls it off. There’s the street smart black guy, the nasty girlfriend beater guy and yes, even the pregnant couple and non-English speaking lady to round things out. I had to keep asking myself “how can this movie overcome all these disadvantages? Somehow it does. I mean I barely had time to wonder how Anne Heche has overcome sleeping with Ellen DeGeneres, to ending up dazed and half nude on some farmers’ doorstep, to now married to a guy and pregnant. Come to think of it, that might make a pretty interesting movie plot someday.
Ah, but back to earth now. How is it that everyone roots for John Q. to win out over the nasty HMO, but we still don’t have national health care? God, we booed Hillary right off the stage on that one. I don’t know except that some things are addressed much more simply up on the movie screen than in real life. Maybe it’s that I really believe there’s a better chance the boy would die because there’s no heart available for transplant than he would because no one would pay for the operation. But here’s to a movie that keeps it simple. It doesn’t get anymore basic than “John Q.” And this time I liked that. I give it a “7.0.
Friday, February 8th, 2002
Which is what this movie became last September when its release date was postponed. It’s supposed to now be a wholly inappropriate type of movie, don’t you know. Terrorism for the sake of entertainment? How sick! Well, I actually don’t feel that way. After all, there are plenty of movies about real wars we fought, and they’ll be plenty of movies coming up about September 11th.
The protests over this movie center around firemen and Columbians. Arnold Schwarzenegger plays an L.A. fireman who loses his wife and son to a Columbian terrorist bombing. He then seeks revenge against the key terrorist. The objections? Fireman shouldn’t act as vigilantes and all Columbians aren’t terrorists and drug lords. Fine. I get it. Now, on to the movie please.
First, here’s what’s funny about “Collateral Damage”. Arnold plays a guy named Gordon Brewer and after encountering D.C. politics over taking out the terrorist, he sets out for Columbia to do it himself. Picture big old white Austrian Arnold trolling around the streets and jungles of Columbia quietly searching for the bomber. Hard to do, isn’t it? It’s even stranger to see on screen. How is that so many Columbians he encounters speak English? He’s like the Forrest Gump of avengers, he keeps ending up in the right places meeting the right people. It’s too easy to pick on Arnold in the twilight of his career. He was never a very good actor. The best I can say here is that he does keep dialogue to a minimum, but that stare and that squint. They are so bad I had to laugh each time. But I will say this – Arnold puts that fireman training to good use. Check out how many times he shimmies down ropes and cables and how many times he wields an ax. The CIA could learn a thing or two.
What did help this movie is that they try to develop a story around Arnold’s revenge efforts. Things aren’t always about him. And the folks around Arnold “out act” him so much, they are a welcome relief. But don’t you love action scenes in movies where bullets are flying and guys are falling like they’re slipping on banana peels? It’s all so fake, so pathetic. I would have completely failed this movie except I got taken in by the ending. I honestly didn’t see it coming until the moment Arnold also figures it out. I feel stupid for that. Of course, I was checking my watch so much I was distracted. Yes, things take a turn and I was fooled. That elevates my rating one point for “Collateral Damage”. I give it a “4.0”.
Thursday, February 7th, 2002
There was a story in this weeks Los Angeles Times Calendar section about how “out of touch” movie critics are with the mainstream movie going audience. They recommend films nobody ends up seeing such as “Adaptation” and “The Hours” and go thumbs down on practically every number one movie at the box office.
I try not to be a snob, or as John would say, “ a bearded , effeminate artsy” elitist type reviewer. Last week I chose to see “The Recruit” because my “artsy” side told me it would be time better spent than seeing some teenage horror movie thing. You shouldn’t always listen to your “artsy” side.
“Final Destination 2” is a sequel – the first movie was about a group of kids who “luck out” and do not board a plane that ends up crashing. One of them has a premonition and saves the rest. Of course, “lucked out” is a relative thing, because the survivors then begin dying one by one in a series of freak accidents. It’s “fate” you know – death had a plan and these kids messed with it.
I didn’t care for that first movie – it was too superstitious, made for those who think there are guys who talk to dead people. It was, simply put, too serious. Not so for this sequel. This time a premonition saves a group of people from a fatal freeway pileup. But because they know about what happened to the kids who missed the plane crash, they are quick to try and stop death from carrying out destiny.
That, too, would seem too serious, and it is. But they have added some major laughs here beginning with some of the group being skeptical about the theory. From there, it gets better as we watch the bodies pile up. The freak accidents that doom these people are elaborate and hysterical. The first guy is a piece of trailer trash who fights off fires and explosions only to have his head pierced by a sharp ladder. I saw this movie with three black people sitting behind me and they were almost as funny. You don’t just get to see the ladder falling on this guy – you see it stab right through his right eye! One lady behind said – “man, do you see that? They showed the whole thing!” And the other one says “can’t you see me sitting here?– I seen it!”
After that, people are decapitated, squished by enormous pieces of plate glass and chopped up into neat pieces by sharp wires! Excited yet? How do I explain this – well, if you enjoy irony and well-written, graphic horror, then you are like me and this movie is for you. Yes, I’m a sick puppy.
But don’t get me wrong. It isn’t just cheap thrills. Oh, here comes my “arsty” side and this is pathetic. But there are many false alarms here and it’s tough to figure out exactly how the person is going to be done in. Okay, it’s not a “thinking man’s” movie, but it is extremely well done for the genre. You even have to love it when one kid is on his way into the dentist’s office and tells his mother “if I get the gas and wake up with my pants unbuttoned, we’re not paying”. That’s funny and has little to do with the main story.
“Final Destination 2” loses it a bit at the end as the remaining group tries to stop death’s plan, again getting too seriously caught up in the supernatural, but if you like that sort of stuff, enjoy. Also, it’s a badly named movie since “final destination” refers again to an airplane flight and nobody steps on a plane in this movie. For me, the fun is in the dying. The Murphy’s Law plot that unfolds and does in most of the group is full of hoots. I give the movie a “7.0”.
Friday, February 1st, 2002
This may be one of the more difficult reviews I’ve ever had to do. Before I saw this movie, I had renamed it “I Want Oscar”. That’s because I thought it was a blatant attempt by Sean Penn to finally win that Best Actor award. He was apparently so ticked off a few years back that he didn’t win for “Dead Man Walking’, that he was going to make an obvious attempt to win it with this role. I almost thought he was doing it as spoof on Hollywood. This I concluded from the previews. They had me gagging. “I Am Sam” looked like one of those “politically correct, isn’t he amazing that he overcame all that?” smaltzfests I despise. Well, it was and it wasn’t.
Penn plays Sam, a mentally disabled guy who impregnates a homeless woman. After the birth of their daughter, she takes off. That leaves Sam, with a mental age of a seven year old, alone to raise a little girl. Stop the movie! Am I to believe that this could happen? He takes the baby home to his apartment and proceeds to starve her to death. What seven year-old would know a baby needs food every two hours? I didn’t even know that. Of course, Sam has a kindly neighbor, played by Dianne Wiest, to point that out. But why didn’t she take the kid away? Or at least call someone? No, instead, she teaches Sam to use the Nickelodian television channel schedule to remind him when to feed the baby. Yeah, right. And what if Hogan’s Heroes is moved to a different time? I guess the kid starves to death. But that’s not the point. The main thing is to move this movie along so we’re at the point of the little girl’s seventh birthday. Because that’s when Child Services moves in and decides since Sam only has the mental capacity of a seven year old, his daughter is about to move past him and her development will be stymied. Where were they the first seven years? I’m sorry, but I wouldn’t leave a baby with a seven year old, would you?
Ah, but this is a Hollywood production, so I’ll forgive all that and move along to the custody fight. Sam hires an attorney played by Michelle Pfeiffer. Well, he can’t afford her because she’s one of those Century City types, but he finds a way to make it work. Let me see- she’s one of those Westside working Moms, with a lot of stress, a bad marriage and a young son who hates her. Can you figure out how Sam gets to her?
So I’m not sure how this happened, but I liked this movie. Yes, Penn’s Sam character gets annoying with his whiney, “Rainman” manner, and Pfieffer has the glamorous basket case role down to an art form, complete with her popping jelly beans and marshmallows one after another into her mouth . And the courtroom scenes are right out of the cliché textbook. And Sam has a group of mentally disabled buddies he hangs out with and only one or two appear to actually be mentally disabled. The others are obvious actors and not very good ones. And there’s way too much cuteness and love going on as the writers make good use of the Beatles (Sam names his daughter Lucy after “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds”, which isn’t about drugs he tells us) and Dr. Suess books. Not to mention rather over-the-top product placement for Starbucks and Pizza Hut, places that employ Sam.
But with all that going against this movie, I still liked it. As for why, I don’t know. I ‘d have to credit Penn, who hangs in there with this retard thing and gets you to root for him. The ending is predictably sweet, but for all the unbelievable stuff that came before it to get Sam to this point, it actually made sense. Like I said at the beginning of this review, it’s one of the more difficult ones I’ve had to do because I’m recommending a movie every bone in my body told me I would hate. And I hate that too. I give “I Am Sam” a “7.0” on the scale.
