Extreme Measures

The action is gripping and the story raises important issues about medical ethics in a high-tech society. Gene Hackman is in excellent form, and Hugh Grant does the most finely tuned acting of his career to date.

Even though Extreme Measures starts to get thin and predictable toward the end, it's a movie that does a great job giving the villains real depth their motives are far more complex and multidimensional than usual.

Extreme Measures is a suspense picture that should excite thinking audiences as well as thrill-crazy ones. One possible exception: fans of Michael Palmer's novel, who may wonder why his plot and people disappeared. But after all, in movies as in medicine, extreme measures may be necessary. Read full review

This chilling look at emergency room politics wrestles contemporary medical ethics to an unsatisfactory draw. Similarly, its mix of real and exaggerated situations doesn't quite jell, making for a commercial diagnosis that's good but not great. Read full review

While Extreme Measures is competently directed by Michael Apted, and is never really boring, it's nothing we haven't seen before. And though it attempts to make an important point about the value of life, by the end viewers will only be reminded that they are two fruitless hours closer to the grave. Read full review

Extreme Measures is a medical thriller with two personalities. At times, it's a drama about doctors with God complexes and a moral debate on questions such as, "If you had to kill one person to cure cancer, would you?"...Other times, it's a mystery about nefarious scientists, missing corpses and foot chases in the bowels of New York's subways...Neither side really works, though for a while the movie engrosses anyway. Even when you know you're being manipulated, Extreme Measures intrigues you in a Coma kind of way, because it initially preys on the same fears as that earlier thriller: vulnerability in hospitals at the hands of evil doctors...Then the mystery starts to unravel, and so does the movie. [27 Sept 1996, p.5G]

Sarah Jessica Parker makes an unflatteringly tense appearances as a nurse who knows more than she's telling, and David Morse dredges up his hulking soulfulness as a maverick FBI agent. But no one involved in "Extreme Measures" is displaying a commitment beyond showing up for work. [27 Sept 1996, p.42]