User Reviews

This is one of the better medical-oriented thrillers, or even medical-oriented movies in general, and I was prepared to issue it eight stars up until the final scene where Dr. Luthan is walking down the steps of N.S.U. with none other than the person who, very suspiciously, dogged and thwarted him through the movie, his supervisor, Dr. Manko. I was appalled when I saw that, and consider it a script error.

Now they are buddies and all is forgiven? Manko was not a part of the conspiracy? Then why were we led to believe, repeatedly, that he was?

If that is not enough, what happened next was enough to force me to detract one star and weep for what could have been movie that makes an important and powerful statement for human rights, and humanity in general: When Ruth Myrick offers Dr. Luthan Dr. Myrick's notes (sic), the movie sends a message and projects the erroneous, cynical assumption that in society today, there is widespread approval, by intelligent, cultured, principled people, of the savagery inflicted by her husband.

When Dr. Luthan, after all of his diligence and vigilance, actually accepted the research material borne-of-murder-and-torture, it literally reversed and convoluted the established tenor and heart of the picture.

It was abhorrent and inexcuseable.

Dr. Luthan, when offered the media, had the opportunity to underline, summarize and emphasize his world-view and code-of-ethics, as a doctor of medicine, and as a human being. A great opportunity was missed.

Other scriptual wrong-turns; 1.) Placing Jodie Trammel (and her brother) as part of the conspiracy. By-the-way, why wasn't she and he indicted? 2.) The vague notion of "the room". The definition seems to have morphed in the script, from a hospital room of torture to a homeless refuge far underground (with people who never come up to the surface)?

Any other movie with these inconsistencies and horrible ending, I would have given 4 or 5 stars to. The promise of Extreme Measures was not fulfilled in the end, but the story is one of great social pertinence and one we should not forget nor dismiss. With "medicine's" singular focus on profit, it is highly likely that something like the scenario described in this movie could take place, performed by U.S. companies in either the U.S. or some other, more-receptive country. This could have been a great movie.

Back in the nineties, I was a teenager and started discovering my first thrillers; - among which "Extreme Measures". I quite liked it then, and it still is an adequate thriller twenty-five years later, but admittedly it also pales in comparison to all the genius 70s and 80s hospital/medical horror films and thrillers I've watched since then. Next to genuine classics (like "Coma" or "Seconds"), or even obscure little masterpieces (like "The Resurrection of Zachary Wheeler" or "Parts: The Clonus Horror"), a film such as "Extreme Measures" feels routine, predictable, and derivative.

Hugh Grant stars as a young prodigy-doctor in New York, with a more than promising future ahead of him. But when he becomes too obsessed with a nameless patient's strange symptoms, undisclosed death, and subsequent vanishing of the corpse, he sees his professional career as well as his personal life in great danger. And yet, he still doesn't let go! With Gene Hackman (too briefly) appearing as an elite but suspicious-looking neurologist, and two goons prowling the NY underground in search of disposable homeless men, the mystery isn't too difficult to unravel.

Quite funny detail: the aforementioned goons (David Morse and Bill Nunn) are named Burke and Hare. In case this doesn't immediately ring a bell, Burke and Hare were two notorious murderers in 19th century Scotland. They started as corpse-snatchers for the medical research of a prominent doctor, but quickly turned to murdering people to have the freshest corpses.

I'm not sure why this film only gets around a "6" rating. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and am giving it a "7".

First of all, it has a mostly excellent cast. Hugh Grant is excellent as the young doctor who gets caught up in a conspiracy to use homeless people for experimental unneeded surgery. At first I was bothered by how very young Grant looked; it didn't seem a doctor so young could be advancing so quickly in the field of medicine. However, when you actually look at his real age when the movie was made, it did work.

Gene Hackman -- an actor I never really wanted to like -- is as good as he almost always was, this time playing the disturbingly reassuring evil doctor.

The one real let down here is Sarah Jessica Parker as a physician who is helping Hackman (due to her brother's spinal injury). I simply do not see the attraction to this ridiculously passive actress.

David Morse turns in a strong performance as an FBI Agent also aligned with Hackman, as does Bill Nunn as a similarly aligned police detective.

As to the story itself, which takes place in New York City (and uses locations scenes to the film's advantage), it's sorta scary when you think about how medical researchers could misuse their public trust if they get too wrapped up in the cures on which they are working. In this case, it's spinal injuries. The suspense is very real -- and StephenKing-ish -- when Grant descends into the bowels of New York City to find the people who live underground. And then there's a dramatic twist when our good guy becomes paralyzed himself...or does he...and if he is paralyzed, how can be the hero at the film's conclusion? Nope, I disagree with the general consensus. I think this is a very good suspense film and quite believable...at least as much as almost any film.

Despite lead actor Hugh Grant still riding high from his sleeper hit FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL and a well publicized arrest for curb crawling in Hollywood the previous year, this was not received well in the theaters. Even with the support from the ever versatile Gene Hackman the movie was a box office flop! It's important to state from the outset that the film itself is pretty good and deserved better than it got, not just from the standard of movies that were around but also because it was well acted and raised some very important moral and medical questions that to some extent are more relative today with the controversy over stem cells than it was ten years ago!

As for why the movie bombed I cant really say, perhaps not enough guns, sex and violence or maybe the theme or scenario was very depressing to many people. Also I think that being a thriller, actor George Cloony who was a lead in the popular medical soap ER would have been a better box office draw than Grant. Clooney who was struggling to break into the "A– list" of movie stars at the time would have been believable as a doctor and the movie it self would have elevated him faster up to stardom than the duffers he did at around that time! However, it has to be said this is only as far as being a better box office draw, Cloony of course being American. It has to be said Hugh Grant was very good in this part and I think it was one of his best films. Grant was and still is better known for comedy or a romantic lead not a tough guy roles or action films, so perhaps this is why many in his fan base did not take to his character because it was a thriller not a comedy.

Having said that he was very well cast for the part and on many occasions was able to display his dead pan dry wit and came across quite believable as the out of towner Dr. from the UK who didn't know what he was getting into. His character was typical Grant in the USA not aloof and pompous, but just a little awkward, slightly eccentric maybe and disorganized! I think that coming from England only made the character come across as more vulnerable and isolated as events unraveled and things seemed to conspire against him. When the well respected Dr. Myrick (Gene Hackman) decided that Dr. Luthan's (Hugh Grant) meddling was proving to be problematic as well as inconvenient, Luthan's feeling of paranoia towards his colleagues was more believable. No tough guy or macho part was needed here!

Grant played Guy Luthan who was deemed for great things in the medical profession is a physician who encounters a distraught and frightened patient who had been found wandering the streets. He is extremely agitated, suffering convulsions and has strange legations at the base of his spine. Despite desperate attempts to save his life the mysterious patent dies. Luthan who is shocked over what he has witnessed is puzzled by a silver bracelet on the wrist which indicates that the patient (Claude Minkins) was probably a hospital patient somewhere and starts to make inquires. He orders blood work and lab analysis despite the fact that patient has no medical insurance (much to the annoyance of his superiors). When he can not find the hospital that used silver a bracelet and is concerned about the bizzar results in the lab report, he then delves further into this case much to the disdain of colleges and top faculty administrators. It appears that the patient was homeless and his medical records wiped and put in storage where he is unable to track them.

Then the body mysteriously disappears, the chief residence is very nonchalant about it and berates and scolds Luthan in very dismissive and casual manner over his concern, this only leads him to become more suspicious. Soon he feels that he can't trust anybody as it appears that some are trying to thwart his own investigations. He is correct, ------ some within the hospital as well as outside are trying to frustrate his efforts in unraveling this mystery. Rather than back off, he let's his curiosity get the better off him, puts his professional reputation on the line which only results in disastrous consequences for him personally. Realizing that he is really on to something and now with nothing to lose he becomes even more determined to track down who is responsible for trying to ruin him, ------ but more importantly why?

This movie raises medical and moral issues over the balance of patient care and medical advancement. This is not a new topic, the earlier movie COMA and many or medial shows since have dabbled with this dilemma but the ending in this movie leaves that question strangely unanswered? (Interestingly, at the beginning of the movie Luthan has an ethical dilemma of his own. While working in the ER he has to decide who gets the priority for the only OR room available at the time. It's a choice between a wounded Cop and the and the 'perp' who shot him, who incidentally is in a more serious condition. He decides that the cop should get priority)!

Hugh Grant was good, so was Hackman and fine support from Sara Jessica -Parker, David Morse and Paul Guilfoyle. I would highly recommend this movie!

SPOILERS. It's an old joke. What's the difference between God and a doctor? God doesn't think he's a doctor.

That's Dr. Gene Hackman's problem in this film -- he gets the two identities mixed up. He loses what sociologists call "role distance." He begins to believe that because he can delay death, he can give life, and give the kind of life he'd like to give. Well, we won't get into that here. Please take my course in Philosophy of Medicine 101. You'll find the fee surprisingly affordable. Hurry, offer ends at midnight.

Actually, "Extreme Measures" illustrates just about everything that can go wrong with what might have been a decent medical thriller. The story itself is pretty plain. Promising young doc roots out unethical shenanigans at higher levels, rather as in Robin Cook's "Coma." In "Coma" they just did it for the money. Here they do it because they want to practice what Hackman, Chief of the Shenanigans Department, calls "great medicine." It involves harvesting homeless men, cutting their spinal cords, and more or less encouraging the fusion of the severed nerves. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. When young Dr. Hugh Grant begins to suspect something is up and noses around, he is framed for cocaine possession, employee theft, and having a funny hair style. Ruined, he continues his investigation anyway and it ends in violence.

Michael Palmer, a doc himself, wrote the novel on which this is based. I haven't read it, but Palmer must be aware of just how closely the methods used by Gene Hackman resemble those of the docs who worked under Hitler. Germany was exterminating people who were identified as medically unfit -- for the most humanitarian of reasons, of course. State-sponsored propaganda films showed movies justifying the pruning of the herd. Well, just look at these poor schizophrenic dudes, a kindly doc explains. Aren't they better off dead? Later, Jews were used in experiments to determine how long a human body could survive in near-freezing water, presumably to save the lives of sailors who lost their ships in the Baltic. Next to them, Hackman's doc seems only a trifle misguided.

Did Palmer have anything to say about this script or did he just get paid and run? The film goes in for the cheapest kind of shock effects while the plot meanders around. I mean "cheap," as in hands reaching in from out of the frame and grabbing the hero by the shoulder. Unimaginative too. When Hugh Grant gets his nose bashed in, he suffers from nothing more than a colorful trickle from one nostril to his lip. Didn't the writers ever see a fist fight in a schoolyard? Punched in the nose, the victim bleeds like Niagara and when he tries to wipe it off he smears it all over his lower face. (Cf., Ben Johnson in "Shane" for how it ought to be done.) At one point, Grant is told that he has a break in the 8th vertebra. Later, he sobs to his girl friend that he has a fracture in C6 (sixth cervical) when it should be T1 (first thoracic). Or is that wrong? I was never good at numbers.

Way deep down underground in New York City live "the mole people," from whom Hackman gets his experimental subjects. They're so terrifying that even the normal homeless people who live above ground are afraid to go down there. But Grant does and he finds an angry and suspicious community that looks made up of extras who have been told to dress down. Raggedy clothes, yes, and maybe greasy hair and odd faces, but not TOO extraordinary. Most are freshly shaved, and they speak like high school graduates making a public speech -- being sure to add the "g" at the end of a word like "going". This is directorial sloppiness. Most of the homeless are mentally ill, uneducated, and without material or social resources, bankrupt in every sense. They could not organize a cohesive group. They couldn't organize a trip to a hot dog stand.

It's a minor shame in a way, because there may be a decent thriller lurking in this plot somewhere. Alas, nobody found it, presumably because nobody was looking for it. Everyone involved seems to have taken the easy way out and settled for cash.

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.

Two mans escape barely naked from an institute. One of them reaches at a hospital where Dr. Guy Luthan works who is a very good medic and has extreme care of his patients. Unfortunately he can not save the stranger who arrives at him but he has a doubt on the way he dies so now he starts to look for some clues that might bring him the truth and why that man was is such a worse condition.

Hugh Grant plays the role very good although Gene Hackman doesn't appear for a very long time in the movie only at the end. This movie leaves us with a question on our minds. Is it good too kill some one in order to save other lives? Dr. Lawrence Myrick has a clinic where he brings homeless peoples or the kind that nobody will miss their absence and carry out on them experiments in witch he can find the cure to paralysis.

A rough movie and I think it's one of the best on this topic from the '90 and with two great actors that give a dose of reality witch makes it even more real.

Is it justifiable to kill innocent people to save thousands of lives? What if these people won't be missed by anybody?

This fundamental question behind "Extreme Measures" raises the film above the level of a purely forgettable action-adventure story. Two different positions on this issue are represented in the film by doctors played by Hugh Grant and Gene Hackman. Most of the movie focuses on Grants investigation on the nature of the mysterious deaths of several homeless people, an investigation that leaves him to uncover the truth behind research conducted by Gene Hackman.

In the meantime there's some routine, below-par chase scenes. It's all been done before, and better. An absolutely endless journey into an underground subway goes on for far too long. Hugh Grant is a surprising choice for his role but fares surprisingly well, despite his simply distracting hair.

But what's really worth thinking about is the ethical dilemma. Is Hackman's abduction (and essential murder) of the homeless men a justifiable way to find life-saving cures Hugh's stance, that the men didn't ask to be heroes, perhaps makes the most sense, but the question remains. Unfortunately the film requires and unlikely (but once again competently done) shootout to put an end to the conflict. But the film deserves credit for raising the issue, an issue that could very well become increasingly relevant to life and research. 2/4

Hugh Grant does his usual acting job of hesitating and acting surprised most of the time, but acting isn't a problem in this movie. When he has cocaine planted in his apartment by the bad guys, his closest friends and associates are quick to believe that he adopted drug use as a way of life. When he finds a homeless group underneath the city, they know too much about what is going on, yet don't trust him. Why were they not less trusting of the bad guys who were doing experiments on them? Why were the bad guys using innocent homeless people instead of prisoners or the terminally ill? The bad guys didn't make up very good cover stories for what they were trying to hide. Why not have one of their hit-men pose as the nearest relative of Claude and take his body away? Why wouldn't they need to keep a patient's body after he died for the research they were doing on him? It's a good story idea, and it presents a good moral question, but there are too many flaws. I can see FBI agents allowing research to be done that could help their loved ones, but I can't see them killing innocent people to cover it up.

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.

"Extreme Measures" is virtually an unacknowledged remake of the 1978 film "Coma". Guy Luthan is a young British doctor working at a major hospital in New York. When one of his patients dies with baffling symptoms, Luthan tries to investigate. His efforts, however, are not successful. The man's body mysteriously disappears and his colleagues prove uncooperative. This only fuels his suspicions that something underhand is going on and he makes further enquiries. He warned that if he persists he could be putting his career in jeopardy, and when he ignores this warning he is framed for possession of cocaine. He is forced to go on the run in an effort to clear his name, and discovers that a number of leading doctors, including the eminent neurosurgeon Dr Myrick, are carrying out unethical experiments on the city's vagrants and derelicts in an attempt to find a cure for spinal injuries. Luthan's dead patient was the victim of one of these experiments.

As others have pointed out, this theme of a man trying to clear himself of an unjust accusation of crime is a common one in the thrillers of Alfred Hitchcock. (One difference between this film and most of Hitchcock's is that there is no romantic interest for the hero). By moving out of his normal territory of comedies, especially romantic comedies, Hugh Grant was clearly trying to extend his range. He is not an actor one would normally associate with thrillers, but his casting here makes sense. In some thrillers, the hero is a man- a soldier, spy, police officer or private eye- who is used to facing danger and risk as part of his job description. In others- and this is the more common pattern in Hitchcock films- he is an ordinary guy who suddenly and unexpectedly finds himself in danger. (Or, one might say, an ordinary Guy- Luthan shares this Christian name with the hero of Hitchcock's "Strangers on a Train"). "Extreme Measures" is an example of this second type of thriller, and we can accept Grant as the Everyman character out of his depth because we are so used to seeing him play Joe Average in films like "Four Weddings and a Funeral". Had the role gone to an actor better known for playing "tough guy" roles in thrillers, say Bruce Willis, Pierce Brosnan or Mel Gibson, he might not have seemed so convincing.

Gene Hackman generally makes a reliable villain, and he is reasonably good here as Myrick, but this is not one of his really great bad-guy roles such as Sheriff Daggett in "Unforgiven", Captain Ramsey in "Crimson Tide" or Rankin Fitch, the monstrously cynical lawyer in "Runaway Jury". Myrick attempts to defend his actions as being necessary in the interests of medical science, with a few having to be sacrificed in order to benefit the many, but these attempts at self-justification do not really succeed in making this a serious drama about medical ethics. Certainly, Luthan is not tempted for one minute to sympathise with Myrick's viewpoint- he retorts "I don't care if you find a cure for every disease on the planet! You tortured and murdered those men upstairs, and that makes you a disgrace to your profession!". I doubt if many of the audience will be won over by Myrick either.

Michael Apted's career as a film director (in Britain he is equally well known as a television director) has been rather mixed in terms of quality. He has made one great film ("Nell") and some very good ones (such as "Gorillas in the Mist"), but much of his output consists of competent but routine thrillers such as "Gorky Park", "Thunderheart" and the Bond vehicle "The World is Not Enough". "Extreme Measures" falls into this category- it is exciting enough while it lasts, but contains nothing of any deeper significance. 6/10