February 14–21, 2002

movie shorts

John Q

After Collateral Damage, you might imagine that most every aggrieved father cliché has been used up. But no. Here comes Nick Cassavetes’ anti-HMO manifesto, with John Q (Denzel Washington) battling smarmy heart surgeon James Woods and downright malevolent hospital director Anne Heche, in order to get his dying son (Daniel E. Smith) a heart transplant. Unable even to make his car payments because his hours have been cut down at the factory, John Q and grocery clerk wife (Kimberly Elise) scrabble together meager funds (aided by friends David Thornton and Laura Harring), but still come up against the evil HMO. John Q takes over the Chicago hospital with a gun he’s somehow got past security, bonds with some of the other ER patients feeling oppressed, and eventually offers to give up his own heart for his boy (shades of Heart Condition ). When he prays for a suitable donor heart, you’ve already seen a girl with a rosary hanging from her white beemer’s rearview mirror smashes head-on into a truck. And so, you see, rich folks do give back to the community after all. Robert Duvall phones in his role as hostage negotiator, Ray Liotta hams it up as an idiotic police chief, and poor Kimberly Elise has to cry, a lot. (Absolutely creepiest movie moment in recent memory: in a closing round-up of anti-HMO in-the-news rhetoric, including Hillary Clinton and Gloria Allred, Ted Demme appears, listening to Arianna Huffington sound off on Politically Incorrect.)

—Cindy Fuchs

(AMC Andorra; Cinemagic; UA Cheltenham; UA Grant; UA Main St.; UA Riverview; UA Sameric; UA 69th St.)