Extreme Measures (1996)

SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

This well-executed hospital thriller is only marred by trying to make Hugh Grant into an action hero when quite obviously he isn't cut out for that type of role. Thus, amid the fairly interesting conspiracy parts of the film, we get some generic action components like a fight in a lift and a shootout on an underground train track. If the makers had dropped these and concentrated on more subtle methods to get Grant - like the great scene where he finds cocaine planted in his apartment - then this would have been a better film altogether.As it stands, EXTREME MEASURES is a competent film, very good in places but as a whole just about average. The whole "conspiracy" aspect of the film is a clichéd one by now, but its kept realistic and never fails to be suspenseful. The film successfully engages the viewer into wanting to find out the truth behind all of the mystery at the beginning. The cast is packed with familiar faces and the performances are generally all on the good side. I'll make no apology that I personally dislike Hugh Grant; but I'll grudgingly admit that he's not bad here in one of his rare non-comedy roles. Gene Hackman is second-billed as the chief villain, but he only gets about twenty minutes screen time so doesn't get to make much of an impact, but hey, he's Gene Hackman. David Morse (THE LANGOLIERS) does his stony-faced villain role again (I prefer him as a good guy) while Sarah Jessica Parker is pretty much wasted as a fellow doctor, with absolutely nothing to do.This film's real problem is that the bad guys are actually doing their surgery for the good of mankind; they're just going about it unethically. This means that Hackman can't be made out to be too much of a villain; as basically his heart and spirit are in the right place. This aspect of his character goes at odds with the action-thriller's demand for violence and murder, so on one hand we watch him carry out beneficial surgery, and on the other he's barking out orders to have Grant killed. It doesn't make much sense and so makes the last half hour of the film a very uneasy one, where we're asked to sympathise with murderers after all. I get the feeling that the scriptwriter had dug himself into a hole and wasn't sure how to get out at this point.However, there is an excellent interlude about halfway through where Grant ventures down below the subway system into a spooky world where all the homeless live. This echoes the likes of DEATH LINE, C.H.U.D., and THE NIGHT STRANGLER in its depiction of a frightening world hidden from our own, and is one of my favourite themes in film. There are also plenty of suspenseful bits too, which keep this flawed film from ever getting boring. EXTREME MEASURES is watchable and for the most part intelligent but, due to the story's indecisiveness about its villains, not brilliant.

Extreme Measures is a good, good mystery unraveling thriller. It's a bit bland is all. It's well worth watching, just a tad boring in smaller parts. Extreme Measures is a movie I quite enjoy. Hugh Grant is especially agreeable as Extreme Measure's dominating lead. It's nice seeing Mickey Blue Eyes acting in a quality something outside of his typical romantic-comedies, in fact, I so very well liked Hugh's job in Extreme Measures that I would strongly preference that he do more stout dramas. Dr. Guy Luthan was a great role for Grant, as I hope to see him starring in many more of the same roles in the future, oh wait, it is the future, and he didn't. Sarah Jessica Parker is so wonderful. I love seeing Carrie Bradshaw doing her strong female parts for a change-up, finding them even more appealing than her usually played damsel in delight. SJP is one super hot lady. Gene Hackman is great as Dr. Lawrence Myrick. Lex Luthor lays down a formidable villainous representation in Extreme Measures. Extreme Measures is good, I'm telling ya and I damn near rate it a 7, but it needed more added context to its good, intuitive story. Extreme Measures is a well made multifaceted movie.

***SPOILERS*** Overlooked at the time of its released back in 1996 the movie "Extreame Measures" like a fine wine seems to get better with each viewing. More then just your average hospital drama the movies thought-provoking premise of sacrificing the few to save the many hunts you as well as its star Hugh Grant, as the overly conscientious Doctor Guy Luthan, long after its shocking and mind numbing ending sequence.Working grueling 90 hours weeks at the Gramancy General Hospitals emergency ward in New York City Dr. Luthan has seen everything there is to see in people being treated there. Thats until one evening when he comes across homeless and naked Claude Minkins, Shaun Austin-Olsen, who was found roaming the streets on NYC with nothing on but a plastic sheet. Minkins seems to have every illness known to medical science and before he can be treated he suffers what's called a complete metabolic meltdown dying right there in his hospital bed! Trying to find out the cause of Minkins death Dr. Luthan hits a stone wall in that his body has mysteriously disappeared, or was stolen, from the hospitals morgue.Told to forget about the now missing Minkins by his boss Dr. Jeff Marko, Paul Guilfoyle, Dr. Luthan instead tries to track down Minkins' fellow homeless friend Teddy Dolson, Andre De Shields, who's name Minkins spurted out just before he suddenly passed away. As things turned out Dr. Luthan finds out that both Minkins and Dolson were treated at the Riverside Neurological Center by non other then the famed and world renowned neurologist Dr. Lawrence Myrick, Gene Hackman. What's even more puzzling to the curious Dr. Luthan is that both Minkins and Dolson's medical records have completely disappeared from the hospital's record files!As Dr. Luthan gets closer to the truth behind what happened to both Minkins and his friend Dolson, who's still out loose on the streets, strange things start to happen to him. His apartment is broken into by someone who has cocaine planted there to have Dr. Luthan both discredited and disbarred from practicing medicine. Knowing that he's sitting on top of a volcano that's about to blow Dr. Luthan with the help of one of his patients the street wise Bobby, John Toles Bey, tracks down the place where both Minkins and Dolson were staying before they ended up at Riverdale Neurological Center! In the underground tunnels in and around Grand Central Center Station with their fellow homeless known as "Mole People". While all this is happening Dr. Myrick has sent out two of his goons FBI Agent Hare, David Morse, and NYPD Detective Berke, Bill Nunn, to stop Dr. Luthan from finding out the reasons behind Minkins and Dolson medical conditions. If it ever came out what secret experiments Dr. Myrick was preforming at the center it would either put him behind bars for the rest of his life or ironically would save the lives of untold thousands of persons if they, with human beings used as guanine pigs, are proved successful!***SPOILERS*** Despite being the villain in the movie you just can't be that critical of Dr. Myrick's motives. What Dr. Myrick is doing in his illegal experiments is trying to save lives by implanting the nerve cells of helpless and in many cases terminally ill homeless people into the spines of the cripples patients he's treating at his hospital. Eariler in the movie Dr. Luthan came across the same dilemma that Dr. Myrick faces, in saving one person at the expense of another, and ended up doing in a split second decision the exact same thing that Dr. Myrick has been doing without a second thought for the last couple of years! It's that disturbing fact on Dr. Luthans part that has him, at the end of the film, continue Dr. Myrick's work despite his misgivings about it!***MAJOR SPOILERS*** Also in the movie is a homely looking, before she made it big on HBO's Sex in the City, Sarah Jessica Parker as Dr. Luthan's both friend and assistant nurse Jodie Trannel. Jodie as it later turned wasn't exactly as sympathetic to her friend Dr. Luthan's cause as she at first appeared to have been. As Dr. Luthan got closer to what was behind Dr. Myrick's secret experiments he was soon to find out that Jodie was somehow connected to them in a both major and family-like way!

Hugh Grant stars a ER doctor that happens upon a patient with complex medical issues (and dies). His tests reveal something quite unusual.Gene Hackman plays a well-respected medical researcher that has a secret research lab using the homeless to find cures to diseases. Thought provoking to say the least.Grant's character is ruined after he starts digging into the mystery of this dead patient's maladies, medical mysteries. He just doesn't know what sinister medical research he stumbled upon and who is involved.Sarah Jessica Parker was okay in the film but Grant made it work. Liz Hurley was actually a Producer of the film. Hackman played his character okay but not excellent as usual.It is a taught medical thriller than will make you think if medical research like the Nazi's is really going on in real life. The movie was ahead of its time.Micheal Apted directed it well. Lots of great supporting actors.