Rating: 
Summary: Whatever possessed Washington and Duvall to do this clunker?
Review: JOHN Q is terrible, but if you alternatively view it as a parody of similar past plots, e.g. DOG DAY AFTERNOON, then it actually becomes sort of entertaining. (Thus, 2 stars, not 1).Denzel Washington plays JOHN Q Archibald, a blue-collar factory worker whose son, Mike, has suddenly collapsed with heart problems so massive that death is imminent unless he gets a transplant. John's company health plan won't cover the expected $250K cost of the operation, and without a down cash payment of 30%, the Ice Queen hospital administrator (Anne Heche) refuses to put Mike's name on the national list of potential heart recipients. Even after John pawns or sells everything he owns, the hospital isn't satisfied and announces it's about to wheel Mike out the door. Mrs. Archibald has a hissy fit and demands that John "do something". So, what can a 21st Century Hubby do but commandeer the hospital's ER at gunpoint and take hostages? Admittedly, Washington and Robert Duvall (as police hostage negotiator Frank Grimes) gamely hold up their ends of the film - both are too excellent as actors not to - but they're ultimately sabotaged by abysmal scriptwriting. Somebody (the director? the producer? the Studio Boss?) obviously had an ax to grind, and that is that greedy HMOs and hospitals and heartless medical insurance companies are sucking the lifeblood of middle-class America. So, what else is new? My Big Boo Award goes to Ray Liotta who plays Chief Monroe, the city's 4-star Police Chief who's more concerned about image and the upcoming elections than bringing the JOHN Q crisis to a peaceful conclusion. Again, there's nothing surprising about that except the Monroe character exhibits less brainpower and more adolescent immaturity than one would expect from the rawest rookie. I mean, in what alternate universe would someone like that make it to the top of a major city's law enforcement arm? And then there's that scene towards the end in which the hospital's chief heart surgeon (James Woods), an Archibald hostage, reluctantly agrees to one of his captor's outrageous requests. At that point, a female ER staffer throws her arms around him and proclaims him to be the finest doctor she's ever met. I laughed so hard I'm surprised my wife didn't elbow me in the ribs thinking that I might offend any chest cutters in the audience. Don't see this film unless you're an over-the-top Denzel fan capable of forgiving him anything.
Rating: 
Summary: Next time hire Michael Moore
Review: John Q is a big disappointment. It's a feature film with star power, and highlights some of the problems with America's health care system. Unfortunately the movie is so heavy-handed and clichéd that it trivializes the issue. The previews correctly indicate that this movie is about a man pushed too far by an uncaring, bureaucratic health care system. "Give a father no options," says the movie's tagline, "and you leave him no choice." It's about time someone spoke up about the insurance-HMO-welfare axis of evil in a wide-reaching forum. The hell Michael Moore raised with his documentaries, Denzel Washington was going to raise with this feature film. What a pity then that we get this ridiculous, farfetched, tearjerking snoozer. Even the noble message gets mangled in this mess from director Nick Cassavetes (the son of the great director John Cassavetes). John Quincy Archibald (Washington) is Mister Perfect. He has a perfect, precious son and a perfect, beautiful wife. He and his wife are both hard working, church-going, blue collar Americans. They are the kind of people affected by jobs sent to Mexico, but they still face life with a good attitude. A few character flaws might have made the movie more plausible and less sickening. (It might have reminded America that ugly, bitter, white collar, childless atheists deserve health care coverage too.) When John's son Mike (Daniel E. Smith) suddenly collapses at a wholesome Little League game, they rush him to the hospital. The diagnosis is a weak and swollen heart. Little Mikey needs a transplant or he'll die. Anne Heche plays Rebecca Payne (get it?), a cold-as-ice hospital administrator. She encourages John to consider letting Mike die. And I do have to give the filmmakers credit for actually considering it for a moment. Some medial conditions really are incurable, especially if time is short. Sometimes quality of life should be the focus. But naturally, in a major motion picture, that's not an option. John chooses to try the transplant. Next comes the chore of paying for it. John gets the runaround from his insurance company and from the hospital. John is covered, but not enough. He's caught in a catch-22 that guarantees neither insurance nor social programs will take full responsibility for Mike's heart. As perfect as the Archibald family is, that's how frustrating The System is. John's runaround is presented as a montage of uncaring bureaucrats, disappointed glances, and sympathetic music. John Q wants to make sure you get how frustrating the system is, so it goes too far, turning audience sympathy from the Archibalds to clueless director Cassavetes. Again I have to give the movie credit for making the hospital kind enough to work with the Archibalds for as long as they do. But ultimately they can't keep Mikey any longer. John's wife Denise (Kimberly Elise) calls from the hospital, distraught. They're going to send Mikey home that afternoon. He takes a bus downtown (they've sold both of their cars, along with their appliances and furniture). He begs the doctors one last time, and failing that, he hijacks the hospital. His demands are simple: put his son on the heart recipient list. There is a subplot involving cops posturing over jurisdiction. It's not really needed, but it allows two big names to be added to the marquee: Robert Duvall as a negotiator and Ray Liotta as the chief of police. And finally, a plot development happens late in the movie that I won't reveal here. It is so ridiculous that my respect for this movie dropped down to zero. The development itself is not so much ridiculous as desperate, but when the film's characters take it seriously, the movie becomes absurd. Any hope for John Q being salvaged, disappeared. The issue is so important that I'd like to be able to recommend John Q. But it's just too far gone, even for me.
Rating: 
Summary: CAN WE SAY OSCAR
Review: OMG there are no words to describe how good this movie really is. Denzel played the heck out of John Q and Kimberly Ellise whom I love too...was awesome...all I can see is GO SEE THIS MOVIE!!!
Rating:
Summary: Emotional taffy-pulling
Review: In this overcooked, weak melodrama, Denzel Washington plays a pained, frantic, charismatically decent father. If enough academy voters see the film, it might provide the helpful push this remarkable actor needs to take, finally, the big prize that has eluded him (he won the supporting Oscar for "Glory" in 1989). Weighted down with brickload dialogue and a music track that often seems to have its own agenda, "John Q." is fairly bad. It puts Washington, as honest working man John Q. Archibald, on a pedestal, then keeps lifting the pedestal higher. By the end of the film, he almost has a Renaissance halo circling his head. John's son suddenly collapses at a Little League game, freaking John and his fiercely committed wife, Denise (Kimberley Elise). We know the family is in economic straits, and when the boy is taken to a big Chicago hospital, it turns out that John's medical plan has been cheapened by his employer, and the $250,000 needed for a heart transplant is not available. John and Denise sell or hock all they can, take in donations at their church and home, but their son gets worse. Brilliant surgeon Dr. Turner (James Woods) would love to operate, but a donor is needed and there's that itchy money issue. The hospital's manager, played as a cartoonishly evil villain by Anne Heche, is an ice witch devoid of sympathy. Agonized, John takes over the emergency room and some hostages, including Dr. Turner. Soon, Robert Duvall shows up as a cop to handle the crisis, and even the ice witch starts melting a bit. But the son is fading and the police chief (Ray Liotta) is trigger-happy. TV news crews, including the usual slab of wood with enamelled hair, are in full fever, and the crowd cheers their new Capra hero, John (this film is sort of "Meet John Q." with elements of "Dog Day Afternoon"). James Kearn's script tries to do open-heart surgery on us. The hostages are a neatly-PC demographic cross-section, including a Hispanic madonna with baby, a fat security guard, a despicable punk, a funny pimp dude, a tough bombshell, a couple about to produce their first child - they all bond with John, and he bonds back with fabulous empathy (you see, as a menace machine, he's really just faking). There is a shooting and a medical emergency and even an Oprah-worthy dialogue about the crisis in HMO care. At times, Duvall and Woods look like old acting foxes who can barely restrain the urge to snicker. But Washington is always passionately earnest, lovably desperate, finally delivering his obligatory-for-every-Denzel-Washington-movie, "win one for the Gipper" speech at his sick boy's bedside. But however Oscar-begging the performance, the fact remains that John Q is no ordinary guy. With the help of some convenient improbabilities, he manages the hostage situation smoothly. So it becomes extremely difficult to separate Washington's suaveness from the putative "everyman" character he's playing. Surely in this crisis the hospital, the city, even the insurance biz would get that boy on the donor list and find him a heart, fast. Instead they plod like dumb oxen into the mud of a public relations nightmare. Duvall's character has the same name of a character who once appeared on an episode of "The Simpsons." In that show, Frank Grimes was a man who worked hard all his life and had nothing to show for it, while Homer the oaf skates through with a big house, a wife and three kids. It's an especially nuanced comment on the gross inequalities of capitalism and how it can balance in anyone's favor. This film alludes to this idea by suggesting that John Q and his family could have been helped if only they were on welfare. But it opts out of an exploration into the matter in favor of thrills and spills. But it looks much more like a cartoon in the end than "The Simpsons" ever has, culminating the whole story with perhaps the most revered of the old standby cop-out for hack directors like Nick Cassavetes - the courtroom finale that wraps everything up with a neat little bow. Save your money, or at the very least, see the matinee so that you don't feel quite as ripped off as I did.
Rating: 
Summary: Denzel A Great Cast An Important Issue
Review: Denzel Washington is one of the finest and most consistent actors making movies today. His performance is probably the main reason I would recommend this film, and this is not because those he shares the screen with do a poor job, rather their parts are limited. Robert Duvall, Ray Liotta, James Woods, and Anne Heche all have more to offer than the parts they are given, and their characters are not very demanding of their talents either. Daniel E. Smith who plays Denzel's son is a very fine young actor who makes his debut in this film. The, "professional", critics that I have read all dismissed this film, and one was so condescending, one has to wonder what personal axe they have to grind. This movie is about a problem that tens of millions of Americans live with every day. The specific problem faced by the young man in this film is very extreme; the principle problem however is quite common. Does this film have characters that appear to be cliché, of course it does. To condemn the film based upon its portrayal of an issue that is so common that it has become a cliché is unconscionable. Emergency rooms are not filled with wealthy people seeking health care. The wealthy who are either insured or can pay the nearly 300,000 for the procedure the little boy needs, will never face a hospital administrator that says if you cannot show me the money, take your boy home to die. This is not a mindless film, this is not the 20th remake of some classic, and there are no aliens or special effects. I felt the movie made its point, and I also felt the film went farther than it needed to make the statement it did. If a film crosses over to being repetitive, the audience starts to feel as though they are being treated as though they are terribly ignorant. Judging from the theater audience I saw the film with, the line was not crossed. Some issues need to be repeated because the people that need to understand and act on the issue never seem to get it. This movie is about one such issue. Forget the critics, this movie will be number one at the box-office this weekend, and will likely be the first film to approach and pass the 100 million mark for a film released this year. When it does, it will once again prove that the audience decides what they want to see and what they will spend their money on.
Rating:
Summary: Have a Heart.
Review: This movie holds you on edge, it makes you accept every emotion that the body will manifest. I have never sat in a theater and cried out like this. All the actors were great but just when I thought his past movies were so good that he would coast the rest of his life WHAM! he does this John Q. He is magnificent and I finally accept the fact that his movies will keep topping each other. This is not a movie for the soft hearted they will have to bring boxes of tissue. This movie is right for its time. See it if you've ever been to a hospital. See it if you've got and HMO. See it if you've got children. See it if you work. See it if you have The Heart.
Rating:
Summary: Like a tone-deaf singer at a benefits concert
Review: When director Nick (son of John) Cassavetes went to work on John Q, I'm sure his heart was in the right place. He accepted this job because, with his daughter Sasha on a donated organ recipient list, he felt a connection with the characters and situations presented in the movie. Obviously, the subject matter stuck a resonant chord for others involved in the production, as well. The cast includes such notable names as Denzel Washington, Robert Duvall, and James Woods. Yet, for all of those good intentions, John Q turns out to be hopelessly mediocre - a poorly scripted, preachy fable that forgets about unfolding a coherent, believable story in its zeal to spread propaganda. John Q tells the story of a man, John Archibald (Denzel Washington), who is having trouble making ends meet. Since his work week has been cut from 40 hours to 20, he has been unable to keep up with payments on his wife's car. When his son, Mike (Daniel E. Smith), collapses on a baseball field and is diagnosed as needing a heart transplant, John is confident that things will be okay, because he has medical insurance. Unfortunately, it turns out that his Tier II coverage doesn't cover $250,000 operations. The hospital director, Rebecca Payne (Anne Heche), refuses to put Mike's name on the organ recipient list until John can cover the $75,000 downpayment. The cardiologist, Dr. Turner (James Woods), claims that the matter is out of his hands. But John's wife, Denise (Kimberly Elise), screams at him that he has to do something. So he does - he takes everyone in the hospital's emergency room hostage. When the police, led by the crusty negotiator Grimes (Robert Duvall) and the chief of police, Monroe (Ray Liotta), arrive, he presents his demand: he will release the hostages when his son has a new heart. Otherwise, he will start killing them. John Q's underlying concept has a great deal of relevance in today's world, where the term "medical coverage" is rarely mentioned without an accompanying, profane adjective. Yet Cassavetes and screenwriter James Kearns take this important issue and make it the fulcrum of a story that is divorced from reality by so many contrivances that it's really pretty laughable. From the moment when John storms into the hospital and takes over, believability goes out the window. There is no way that a lone man, untrained in fighting and with only a small gun, could take over the wing of a hospital, hold off the entire Chicago police force, and turn into an instant folk hero while threatening to kill innocent people. But that's not all - we also get loads of corny dialogue and several pointless subplots. A power struggle develops between Grimes and Monroe, but this is just filler. And there are feeble attempts to satirize media zeal in the person of a TV reporter who's as concerned with his appearance as with getting the story. Films like Die Hard and The Negotiator have offered similar subplots to better effect. Here, they're just an annoying form of background noise. Speaking of annoying background noise - John Q's soundtrack, which features jarring instrumentals and at least one grossly out-of-place ballad, should have been replaced or re-edited at some point during the film's post-production phase. It's almost as if composer Aaron Zigman turned in his score without watching the movie. Normally, for me to notice it, a soundtrack has to be very good or very bad. Here, it's the latter case. Denzel Washington plays, well, Denzel Washington - same performance different movie. You may as well save your money and just rent any of the growing collection of pulpit-pounding, cut-and-paste performances he's fed to the bleeding-heart portion of the moviegoing populace. Robert Duvall has no trouble playing a veteran cop who probably loves the smell of napalm in the morning. Anne Heche and Ray Liotta don't test their ranges in their portrayals of dislikable individuals. James Woods offers and effective turn as a doctor caught between his oath and the system. Solid support is provided by Kimberly Elise as John's supportive wife and Daniel E. Smith as his dying son, but face it, there are no Oscar-worthy performances to be found here, but acting is just one of John Q's many faults. Aside from the sheer implausibility of the principal action, the film's most glaring weakness lies in its inability to state its case with any degree of subtlety. People, even those who agree with the political doctrine being espoused, don't like sermons. And that's precisely what John Q turns into - a 2-hour attempt to indoctrinate viewers into believing that the current health care system is in desperate need of reform (to me, this seems self-evident). The movie isn't content to show the inadequacies of the system - it talks about them endlessly in speeches that would have been at home in a public service announcement. Not only is this tedious, it's unnecessary - the events happening to John are sufficient to illustrate the situation. At its heart, John Q is a drama, but the movie frames several sections as action sequences, complete with artificially generated tension. There's a scene in which a sharpshooter climbs through the hospital's air conditioning ducts in order to get a shot at John. This is handled so badly (like something in a direct-to-cable B-movie thriller) that I found myself cringing. Sadly, that's the way I reacted to much of this movie - a good idea with noble intentions gone awry because of a poorly crafted screenplay and uneven direction. Next time Nick Cassavetes wants to tell a deeply personal story, he should rely on something that is less obviously manufactured by a connect-the-dots screenwriter.
Rating:
Summary: Five stars are not enough Whew!! Bring a big box of tissues.
Review: This movie is incredible, wonderful. I never heard an audience clap so many times. And I had to keep wiping tears out of my eyes. This is a pretty straightforward story about a father of a kid who needs a heart transplant and the insurance system-- his HMO screws him, and the hard hearted hospital administrator tells him to get used to the idea of his kid dying if he can't come up with $250,000. There are no really major surprises in this. It's the acting, the heart wrenching story that touches you, that keeps you immobilized with deep feeling. As a father myself, I just kept relating to this story, with feelings welling up in me again and again. It is superbly written, directed, and acted. PG-13 rated, this is a great family movie. My 12 year old son really liked it too. Denzel might get an Oscar for this one. The screenwriter definitely deserves one. Sigh. They should do the Oscars like the Olympics and give out Golds, Silvers and Bronzes. Poor Ray Liota, it looks like he is getting typecast as a real creep (...) On the other hand, he does a great job making you hate him. There's certainly talent in that too. This is a very straight on plot with minimal side plots happening. Damn, is Denzel good in this. This is a movie with a message. It'll be incredible if it actually helps make something change in health insurance. They went so far, they should go even further and take the feelings they so effectively evoke in the audience to the next level, to get them to call their congressional representatives.
Rating: 
Summary: A "Heart" Living Hell for a Father and Son
Review: Denzel Washington(John Q) brings back his great acting skills in this new film entitled "John Q". Lines like "I am I going to die, or "Did you get me a new heart", are all tear jerking lines. The story begins as we see John(Washington) yelling at a man because he's taking away his car. You soon come to the conclusion that they are broke and are struggling to survive. They have a son, Mike(Daniel E. Smith) and John is married to a beautiful woman Denise(Kimberly Elise). That same day, Mike has a baseball game and collapses suddenly on the baseball field. He is rushed to the hospital and finds out he needs a heart transplant. The lead of this hospital(Anne Heche) figures out that John's insurance can't cover this heart transplant. A doctor(James Woods) shows them the photos of Mike's heart and like always, the parents cry. From this time on, the only thing Denise really does is cry and say"Is my baby gonna be alright?" The hospital refuses to put Mike on the donor's list and John decides to take over the hospital. While he does, the police find out, including great actors Ray Liotta and Robert Duvall. The movie is very predictable but I admit at times, I was dragged to tears. This film has everything you need in a movie, a reasonable plot, comedy, action, and drama. Washington gives an outstanding performance, but is dragged by Elise's crying... This is not one of those movies that are only worth watching on video, it's a great movie that i recommend to everyone who's mature enough to watch a boy dying right in front of his parents, at 10. Think about that. Washington's best line in the film is,"I will not bury my son, my son is going to bury me!"
Rating:
Summary: An Outstanding Moive
Review: I don't think enough can be said about how wonderful this movie is. A father who goes all out to save his dying son is a noble act in any society. Denzel Washington has done this movie justice by performing so well and really getting into the charcater. This is a deep film. And I believe that Denzel should get an Oscar for this one for sure. His role was that great! Go see it and then when it comes out on DVD, make sure that you buy a copy too. You won't be disappointed.
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