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.
