Desperate Measures
|
List Price: Our Price: $4.46 You Save: $5.53 (55%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $1.48 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
Movie Reviews of Desperate Measures
Movie Review: Great Movie
Summary: 4 Stars
See this movie. It is all worth the two minute startling ending!Movie Review: Too Fast & Slick For It's Own Good!
Summary: 3 Stars
Boy this movie is fast. It certainly uses all it's cards at once. It doesn't save enough moderately nor sparsely. It really reminded me of Speed in some stark way. Michael Keaton acts great, trying to be Anthony Hopkins in Hannibal. He pulls it of well. Andy Garcia does an OK job but his acting wasn't spectacular. For some inane reason I wanted Keaton's evil character to win through in the end. Wasn't he abused or something as a child? Again that's reverse psychology - the viewer going for the bad guy aka Hannibal. The Australian DVD version has about 30 extra minutes of interviews & behind the scenes footage. That is something you Americans it looks like, don't appear to have. But we missed out - we didn't have any closed captions or subtitles. That would've been handy considering some of the dialogue was incomprehensible. Overall I think this movie was too fast for it's own good. It should have slowed down a bit so the viewer isn't overloaded with too much pace. The aftertaste of the movie was one where you won't want to watch it again. But during it did have massive classic potential. But giving the viewer too much can lessen the goodness & impact of the movie...Rating: 2 & a half stars out of 5!Movie Review: DRASTIC MEASURES PERHAPS?
Summary: 3 Stars
Admittedly preposterous and implausible, DESPERATE MEASURES is nonetheless a tidy and engaging thriller. Director Barbet Schroeder eschews his usual heavy handed drama for this action thriller in which Michael Keaton plays a very vile criminal who happens to be the only donor available for the dying child of cop Andy Garcia. Brian Cox is underused in his role as Garcia's boss, and Marcia Gay Harden has done better than this role as the persistent doctor. Garcia's performance is dedicated, and Joseph Cross as the young boy is charmingly effective. Keaton, however, seems to be playing his role as a comic character instead of the outlandishly evil man he is. The ending is one that will probably irritate you, it did me, but overall the movie does what it was probably supposed to do.Movie Review: Perils of the Hollywood formula
Summary: 2 Stars
David Klass's screenplay is so formulaic it plays like the demonic spawn of some kind of Hollywood screenwriting software. Take one empathetic hero (Andy Garcia), and add a strong motivation in the form of a dying child. Match him with a hateful villain (Michael Keaton) with an equal and opposite motivation - he's a jailed sociopath with one chance at freedom. Force them into visually spectacular conflict (lots of shooting and explosions) in a confined arena (the hospital). Add plot holes freely to escape from logical dead ends (cutting chains with surgical lasers; running with a wounded leg; fantastically inept cops). Increase the pace towards a life-or-death climax (the car chase and the bridge) in which the hero triumphs and the villain dies (or escapes to make way for a sequel). Roll credits. Admittedly, it kind of works here, but nowhere near enough. The essential problem is one of tone: the terminal illness of a child and the possible redemption of a cooperative criminal is simply an unsuitable basis for an action-thriller. It makes the filmmakers seem not only flippant, but transparently incompetent at manipulating our emotions. There is, potentially, a good story about a criminal's redemption to be told from this film's point of departure - a powerful drama with the tone of "Dead Man Walking" rather than "Lethal Weapon" - and especially with this cast. Michael Keaton has enough moral ambiguity for us to believe him as a killer who might choose to do something good. But in this one-sided role which requires nothing but wild-eyed histrionics and physically implausible stunts, he's wasted. As will be your money.Movie Review: Annoying snore...
Summary: 2 Stars
I'm wondering when it became a federal crime to have a PLOT in a movie anymore. The writers of "Desperate Measures" apparently thought an interesting and coherent storyline would get them a seat in the death house because they avoided anything even remotely connected to reality in this movie.
First, there's the eminently annoying Andy Garcia. His usual tics are in full bloom - this guy has more twitches than Clint Eastwood on speed. His son needs a bone marrow transplant, and the only human being on the entire earth who is a match is psycho killer Michael Keaton.
The movie is about how Garcia tries to keep the nutcase alive after he torches the hospital personnel and shoots all the cops in his escape attempt. The boy who plays the son is adorable; one of the few kids who actually ACTS like a kid. And Michael Keaton really has a knack for psycho parts (although I still miss his "Batman" hero performances.) Both Keaton and the kid are the only reason it even merits two stars.
But it's the idea that no matter what this guy does, who he kills, he MUST live so Garcia's kid can get a transplant. After one of the many slaughter scenes in the movie, the police captain says to Garcia, "How many cops have to die so your son can live?"
Good freaking question!