Desperate Measures

A Barbet Schroeder movie

With Michael Keaton, Andy Garcia, Marcia Gay Harden, Joseph Cross and others

Monika says:

A little boy suffering from leukaemia, a desperate father and a convicted murderer as the only possible donor of bone marrow - these are the ingredients of Barbet Schroeder's thriller DESPERATE MEASURES. Of course multiple killer Peter McCabe (Michael Keaton) doesn't volunteer for the procedure that could save Matt's (Joseph Cross) life. But his father Frank Conner (Andy Garcia) is a police officer and not willing to take no for an answer. Finally McCabe agrees, but uses the surgery for his escape and the hospital becomes the set for a wild chase.

Every little boy likes to play catch, and when grown men are paid real money for the game they like it even better. As long as the game provides entertainment for the audience there's nothing wrong with that. And DESPERATE MEASURES is nothing if not entertaining. Of course it's not Shakespeare, but who would expect that from an action thriller. It has all the elements needed for success: the villain who in the end shows a little heart, the precocious kid who outsmarts all the grown-ups, the supposedly righteous law enforcement agent who admits to a couple of skeletons in his closet. What's missing are a couple of barely dressed women worshipping the hero, but they will hardly be missed, except by those who go to the movies only for this kind of attraction.

The female lead is Marcia Gay Harden as Dr. Samantha Hawkins. Her actual patient is Matt, but most of the time she is busy tending to McCabe's bleeding victims. He also threatens her with a knife, but Conner defends her with teeth and claws because he needs her to perform surgery on his son in case he can get the unruly donor to cooperate.

Michael Keaton's escape plan is far beyond realism, but the viewer watches him with a mixture of fascination and horror. Batman doesn't need a rubber suit to be invincible, or at least he doesn't seem to. He can't escape all the bullets, though, and in the end limps heroically along the corridors. That's not enough to stop him, however we don't get to see him in the trademark undershirt his equally tough colleague Bruce Willis likes to wear. In the course of McCabe's flight the hospital is badly damaged. Let's hope somebody steps in to pay for all the repairs. After all, causing as much damage as possible to entertain the audience is what thrillers like this one are for.

Solid entertainment with two convincing lead actors that doesn't let you get bored.

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Monika Hübner