EXTREME MEASURES
US, 1996, 110 minutes, Colour.
Hugh Grant, Gene Hackman, Sarah Jessica Parker, David Cronenberg, Bill Nunn.
Directed by Michael Apted.
Set in ER or Robin Cook novels territory, like Coma, a medical mystery about researchers assuming that they are above ethics, all for the benefit of humanity. Hugh Grant plays straightforwardly as the decent doctor who gets caught in Gene Hackman's mesh. It is quite atmospheric as Grant tries to help a patient but is framed by the police, dismissed from his job, betrayed by friends and shot at in the New York subway. Needless coarse language, marring what is otherwise an entertaining thriller. Modern Frankenstein thriller-fable.
1. Entertaining thriller? Murder mystery? Medical thriller?
2. The New York City settings? The streets, homes, the hospital and the detail of its wards, operating rooms? The sinister aspects of hospitals? The musical score?
3. The title? Its reference to the treatment of the patients? The means for working towards cures? The actions of Dr Myrick?
4. The opening, the naked men in the street, the guarded building, the pursuit? Claude Minkins and his going to the hospital, the convulsions, the symptoms? The wristband and the name? People not knowing what the wristband meant?
5. Guy Luthan and Hugh Grant's screen presence? His role in the hospital, his attending Minkins, the information about the room and Dolson? The puzzle about Minkins' death? The analysis of the tests? Luthan and his puzzle? Looking for the body? The morgue denying that the body had been there? The information about Gramercy Hospital? The disappearance of the files?
6. The introduction to Dr Myrick? Gene Hackman's screen presence? Genial covering sinister? His henchman and their searching for the missing men? Dr Myrick, his reputation, at work, suave manner, social acceptance, New York society, his wife? Luthan and his apartment being ransacked? Hare and Burke and the planting of the cocaine, Luthan's arrest, the reaction of the hospital authorities? The misinformation about Minkins' body?
7. Luthan meeting the homeless man, his being guided to the room, the prescriptions? Going underground, the subterranean world, the tunnels, the people? Dolson and his illness? The experiments? Luthan and the people, his pleas towards them, bringing Dolson out, the confrontation with Hare and Burke? The fight, Luthan shot, Burke electrocuted, Dolson's death? The light and darkness, a sinister world?
8. Luthan and his relationship with Jodie Trammel? Their work together, her support? Her brother in his wheelchair? The brother attacking Luthan? His waking in hospital? His paralysis, Myrick and his discussions, the breaking of the spinal cord, the mystery cure? Myrick and his explanation of his work?
9. The issue of experimentation, medicine and medical cures, victims for the improvement of others? Myrick's philosophy of eugenics and the sacrificing of some for the benefit of the few? The revelation about Tri-Phase? and the paraplegic relatives, the people who pay for the cure?
10. Jodie and the truth, telling Luthan that he is not paralysed, his escape? Luthan and the confrontation with Hair in the lift shaft?
11. Myrick and the confrontation with Luthan? Myrick and his tempting Luthan with the prospects of working for Tri‑Phase? and having a brilliant career? The confrontation and the discussions about medical ethics? Myrick's death?
12. Jodie and her betrayal? Her concern for her brother? Her decision to help Luthan?
13. Mrs Myrick, Luthan's visit, the documentation? Luthan and his dilemma about what to do with the information and for his own career?
14. An entertaining thriller? Mystery? The variation on the Frankenstein themes and doctors `playing God'? Issues of medical ethics and just because a thing can be done, the argument whether it should be done?
