Movie Term Paper

From its very first scene, "John Q" feels as if it's designed to put a choke leash around your neck so director Nick Cassavetes can give it a good, hard yank whenever he wants you to feel something. In this opening scene we watch a pretty blonde in a white BMW passing cars on a winding mountain road with a double yellow line. I'm sure I don't have to tell you what's coming, but Cassavetes toys with the viewer, dragging out a couple close calls to make your heart race before -- whammo! Squashed blonde. (Schrager, 15-18)

What does this have to do with a movie about factory worker Denzel Washington taking over an emergency room at gunpoint to get his dying son a heart transplant? You guessed it -- the girl's an organ donor. But "John Q" doesn't get back to her until 10 minutes before the end of the movie. Cassavetes just puts it at the beginning for shock value.

One of the cute little quirks about guns: everybody pays attention when you pull one out. People who wouldn't give you the time of day, people who spend weeks blowing you off or ignoring your problems, suddenly have nothing better to do than hang on your every word. Of course, they usually raise all kinds of sticky legal issues as well, but in the short term, they can be very appealing. That must be why Hollywood likes using them so much. Complex issues turn into straight goody-guys/bad guys stuff with the simple addition of a firearm, allowing producers to pay lip service to "serious issues" without actively engaging them. (Schrager, 15-18)

John Q almost falls victim to such shallow thinking. Ostensibly an outcry against the current state of American health care, it panders as often as it preaches, using rabble-rousing tactics in support of a very complex issue. Though its heart is in the right place, it comes perilously close to undoing those good intentions with rubber-hammer emotions and outright demagoguery. It's saved, like countless other pictures before it, by the presence of the incomparable Denzel Washington in the lead. Washington is riding the crest of an Oscar nomination for his Mephistophelean police officer in Training Day. Here, he turns the smoldering anger from that earlier film towards a more noble cause, playing a desperate father with a child in need of a heart transplant. His performance catalyzes all of the emotions the rest of the film struggles with, and keeps John Q from sinking under the shameless histrionics.

John Q is an overly sentimental film containing serious commentary about the health insurance industry. For a star-powered vehicle, it is filled with bad acting and dialogue, but that didn't dampen its emotional appeal at the viewing I attended. (Schrager, 15-18)

John Archibald (Denzel Washington) and his wife Denise (Kimberly Elise) are having trouble making ends meet. To make matters worse, their son Mike (Daniel Smith) collapses playing baseball and requires a heart transplant that would cost them $250,000. As he works through ...