JOHN Q

REVIEWED BY CHARITY BISHOP

Our rating: 3 out of 5

Because of: foul language, thematic elements

Rated:

Where do you draw the line? When should you take the law into your own hands? When does a father have no choice? These are questions John Q asks in as an appealing nature possible, but the fact remains that the father was wrong in the choices he made. What other choice did he have? I honestly don't know, but it's a film you have a hard time rooting for, since your emotions are wrenched between moral law and spiritual law. Still, for older audiences who can handle the content, I would recommend it as a conversation starter.

John Quincy Archibald (Denzel Washington) is a full-time father and underpaid employee. His son Mike (Daniel E. Smith) wants to be a bodybuilder. His wife Denise (Kimberly Elise) is angry that her car has been towed away due to their mounting debts. But all this seems inconsequential when the big time bad news hits... his son collapses halfway to first base in a schoolyard baseball game. Rushing him to the hospital, the parents are distraught to learn the truth: Mike's heart is three times larger than it should be. Unless he has a new heart immediately, he's going to die. The problem? The cost of such a procedure (even just to get to the head of the donor list) is upwards of $30,000 dollars. His insurance won't cover it. They've depleted his coverage to only cover certain procedures, not including heart transplants. Working full time, selling off the furniture in his house, and accepting charity from his local church, John Q is able to come up with about half the cost... but the money is just going to keep Mike in the hospital.

His son is fading fast, and the morning they decide to turn him out of intensive care, our hero makes a decision which will change the course of his life... and perhaps save his son. He enters the hospital with a gun and takes the leading physician hostage. Until his son gets on that donor list, no one comes in, no one goes out. Among his hostages is the beefy security guard, a pregnant woman and her husband, an abused teen and her wealthy boyfriend, several nurses and a black man with his finger half sawed off. They are therein surprised when John makes allowances... fingers are sewn back on, broken arms are seen to, the pregnant woman reassured all will be okay. But when the police call for stall tactics, John makes a horrible promise... after five o'clock, one hostage each hour will die UNTIL his son gets on the donor list.

Although the film takes a long time to get started, inevitably the climax is one pulsating with emotional conflict and resolution. Yes, we do side with John Q, even though what he does is wrong. He endangers the lives of people coming to the emergency room, and breaks the law by holding up innocent civilians. Yet he really is a good guy. His motives are what you might call pure. His wife has no clue what's going on. Even the public side with him when it comes right down to it. He's a likable, empty-threat kind of a guy forced to take matters into his own hands. What's more, after the runaround, excuses, and devil-may-care attitude of the hospital, media-care and the insurance company, you tend to take his side in the debate. The film's message is pretty clear -- anyone, no matter how rich or poor they are, deserves medical care. The film even tries to pass John off as a Christian... his wife and family attend church, pray for one another on a regular basis, and a plot twist in the last half shows a Christ-like willingness to sacrifice oneself for another. His last speech to his son contains a lot of wisdom, encouraging Mike to treat all women like princess, stay away from smoking, drinking, and drugs, and tell his mom he loves her on a daily basis. 

Why, then, did the filmmakers have to give it a sour edge by including some crusty profanity and anti-conservative viewpoints? There's a dig at gun shows ("One show, that's it -- in and out with a gun in five minutes") which proves how stupid Hollywood writers are; purchasing legal guns isn't that easy, and you don't go to gun shows to get them if you intend to do something bad with them. The otherwise great speech also implies that money is more important than anything. Language becomes tedious. Two f-words, several abuses of Jesus' name, and GD litter the script, along with off the cuff slang like "friggin'" and "screw you." Some violence, mostly implied, crops up -- the film opens with a car accident in which an impatient driver passes a large truck on a hill and is hit by another truck coming from the opposite direction. The abused girlfriend in the ER finally stands up to her pretty-boy, sprays mace in his face, and kicks him several times, once in the crotch. John is attacked by a scalpel and mace, and slams his attacker in the head, bloodying the man's nose. A surgery scene shows a particularly gruesome chest cavity. Several times guns are used to wound and/or threaten people; at one point we hear a gun go off and anticipate death, but it turns out differently than expected. 

Overall the film was worth seeing once, if only for the moral questions it raises. The language makes it a deterrent for families, and some may object to the ending. But being the woman of faith and justice I am, I felt John Q's outcome was appropriate.