The doctor is in, but really grumpy
Harrison Ford, left, and Brendan Fraser as good men who bump heads.
(CBS Films Inc.)
Extraordinary Measures
Running time: 106 minutes
MPAA rating: PG (thematic material, profanity, a mild suggestive moment)
On the Web
On TV, medical dramas with dire dilemmas are often referred to as disease-of-the-week movies.
The big screen is almost always a better fit for trauma dramas because of heftier budgets, which can lure quality actors and better production values. For those of us taking the dramatic ride in a dark room filled with strangers, that translates into a better understanding of the medical challenge.
It can also mean you'll need an extra hankie or two.
"Extraordinary Measures," starring Harrison Ford, Brendan Fraser and Keri Russell, needs the extra dramatic bump the big screen (and the aforementioned production advantages) can bring. Based on Geeta Anand's "The Cure," the highly emotional story revolves around one couple's dramatic race against time to save two of their three children stricken with the often-fatal Pompe disease.
Here's where the movie version gets tricky, however. "Extraordinary Measures" is "inspired" by the valiant efforts of New Jersey businessman John Crowley (Fraser) and his wife Aileen (Russell). Ford's loner, distinctly non-social research scientist, Dr. Robert Stonehill, is a fictional character. He's a compilation of several doctors who jumped on the research bandwagon to assist the Crowleys and other parents and their children desperately in need of a drug quickly.
So this story begins in Portland, Ore. instead of New Jersey. I don't have a problem with stretching the absolute facts a little to get a potentially grim story like this into a movie theater. Let's face it. Heightened reality is what makes us go to movies in the first place.
To put it succinctly, life often takes too long to unfold. Movies need to get in and get out in a couple of hours. One of the problems with the otherwise excellent "Flash of Genius" starring Greg Kinnear as the wronged inventor of the intermittent auto windshield wiper in 2008 was that it parlayed too many facts into the telling of the story.
Cut a few corners and combine some characters and semi-real life becomes more palatable on a movie screen. Purists might scoff a little that Ford's Dr. Stonehill teeters on the edge of cliché with his pick-up truck and longneck beer, not to mention his habit of blasting vintage rock music throughout his lab.
It is, after all Harrison Ford. No stranger to playing stone-cold, stone-faced loners (the stoic Indiana Jones, the stoic U.S. president in "Air Force One," the stoic Jack Ryan in "Patriot Games," etc.), Ford at least brings the tiniest bit of nuance to this research academic.
Screenwriter Robert Nelson Jacobs, an Oscar nominee for "Chocolat," does a good job of incorporating the kids -- especially Meredith Droeger as stricken Megan -- into what amounts to a battle of wills between two stubborn men and a pharmaceutical company with an eye on the bottom line as well as saving lives.
The dramatic pivot point, and, frankly, one of the reasons to invest in this heart-grabber, comes when Crowley gathers enough money to launch production and convinces a larger pharmaceutical company to join forces. It calls for a team effort, which is as foreign to a certain research scientist as schmoozing venture capitalists.
I like Fraser more in a lighter kind of role; as a somewhat dufus leading man in comic-adventures like "The Mummy" franchise, for instance.
One of the elements "Extraordinary Measures" lacks to make the leap from an emotional, good film to cinematic magic is that director Tom Vaughan ("What Happens in Vegas") can't get Ford and Fraser to kick up the needed dramatic dust when they go toe-to-toe with life-changing decisions on the line.
The big screen is almost always a better fit for trauma dramas because of heftier budgets, which can lure quality actors and better production values. For those of us taking the dramatic ride in a dark room filled with strangers, that translates into a better understanding of the medical challenge.
It can also mean you'll need an extra hankie or two.
"Extraordinary Measures," starring Harrison Ford, Brendan Fraser and Keri Russell, needs the extra dramatic bump the big screen (and the aforementioned production advantages) can bring. Based on Geeta Anand's "The Cure," the highly emotional story revolves around one couple's dramatic race against time to save two of their three children stricken with the often-fatal Pompe disease.
Here's where the movie version gets tricky, however. "Extraordinary Measures" is "inspired" by the valiant efforts of New Jersey businessman John Crowley (Fraser) and his wife Aileen (Russell). Ford's loner, distinctly non-social research scientist, Dr. Robert Stonehill, is a fictional character. He's a compilation of several doctors who jumped on the research bandwagon to assist the Crowleys and other parents and their children desperately in need of a drug quickly.
So this story begins in Portland, Ore. instead of New Jersey. I don't have a problem with stretching the absolute facts a little to get a potentially grim story like this into a movie theater. Let's face it. Heightened reality is what makes us go to movies in the first place.
To put it succinctly, life often takes too long to unfold. Movies need to get in and get out in a couple of hours. One of the problems with the otherwise excellent "Flash of Genius" starring Greg Kinnear as the wronged inventor of the intermittent auto windshield wiper in 2008 was that it parlayed too many facts into the telling of the story.
Cut a few corners and combine some characters and semi-real life becomes more palatable on a movie screen. Purists might scoff a little that Ford's Dr. Stonehill teeters on the edge of cliché with his pick-up truck and longneck beer, not to mention his habit of blasting vintage rock music throughout his lab.
It is, after all Harrison Ford. No stranger to playing stone-cold, stone-faced loners (the stoic Indiana Jones, the stoic U.S. president in "Air Force One," the stoic Jack Ryan in "Patriot Games," etc.), Ford at least brings the tiniest bit of nuance to this research academic.
Screenwriter Robert Nelson Jacobs, an Oscar nominee for "Chocolat," does a good job of incorporating the kids -- especially Meredith Droeger as stricken Megan -- into what amounts to a battle of wills between two stubborn men and a pharmaceutical company with an eye on the bottom line as well as saving lives.
The dramatic pivot point, and, frankly, one of the reasons to invest in this heart-grabber, comes when Crowley gathers enough money to launch production and convinces a larger pharmaceutical company to join forces. It calls for a team effort, which is as foreign to a certain research scientist as schmoozing venture capitalists.
I like Fraser more in a lighter kind of role; as a somewhat dufus leading man in comic-adventures like "The Mummy" franchise, for instance.
One of the elements "Extraordinary Measures" lacks to make the leap from an emotional, good film to cinematic magic is that director Tom Vaughan ("What Happens in Vegas") can't get Ford and Fraser to kick up the needed dramatic dust when they go toe-to-toe with life-changing decisions on the line.
Comments