Extreme Measures

Hackman's role requires him to spend so little time on screen that it's virtually an above-the-title cameo, and Grant trots out his trademark charming mannerisms, which look a bit fresher than usual by virtue of the darker than usual context. Be warned: Director Michael Apted does not resist the temptation to preach. 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

It's a little hard to take Hugh seriously but he acquits himself reasonably well in this slight but entertaining thriller. Read full review

Apted keeps the speechifying and dramatic poses away from Grant (poor Hackman’s the one forced to say, ”If you could cure cancer by killing one person, wouldn’t that be the brave thing to do?”). And he gives the star room to do clean work without the fussiness that marred Nine Months. 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 has disturbing moments, and poignant ones, too. It plays a good game of paranoia with its unlikely hero. Once the story gets past Luthan's implausible firing on trumped-up drug charges, it places him alone in a hostile world. Relying only on a determination to solve the medical puzzle, he goes on a desperate expedition into the bowels of the subway system. It's a grim, scary sequence, and Grant seems a million miles away from his stammering comedic style -- an extreme that is surprisingly engaging. Read full review

There's not much to save this formulaic suspense film from seeming both ridiculous and predictable, but if you can get past the groaner dialogue and hysteria that follow the opening credits, the midsection of "Extreme Measures" does generate some tension. [27 Sept 1996]

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]

A ludicrous medical thriller operating on the supposition that readers and moviegoers have forgotten about "Coma". [27 Sept 1996]

Any sincere investigation of the situation's ethical dilemmas is hampered by a plot run amok with transparently nefarious evildoers and ever-more ludicrous complications, until it sputters to a conclusion and a thoroughly preposterous epilogue in which all animosities are neatly put to rest. Somebody call a doctor. Read full review

The forced hybrid of a preposterous potboiler plot with genuine questions of medical ethics, Extreme Measures is weakened, not strengthened, by its strange bedfellows shenanigans. And the fact that director Michael Apted is able to put considerable realism and skill into his filmmaking merely emphasizes how out to lunch this picture’s story is. Read full review

It’s too bad the script never allows their ethical battle over human guinea pigs to rise above the level of plot device. With these actors, the debut film from Grant and Hurley should have soared above TV mediocrity. What the hell were they thinking? Read full review

Within the first half-hour, all suspense has been punctured. Not only do you find out who the two men are, and why they and their jiggly testicles are galloping through New York, but you learn exactly who's chasing them and why. Worse still, like a flabby episode of Columbo, you get to know whodunnit right at the start of the film. Read full review

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]