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.

I found myself debating the film's moral questions on the way out of the theater. Read full review

Extreme Measures, a new medical thriller with Hugh Grant and Gene Hackman as doctors with differing views on medical ethics, is an episode of "Beauty and the Beast" grafted onto an episode of "ER" as directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Read full review

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

Extreme Measures isn't going to be described as the "slam bang thrill ride" of the Autumn, or any other such nonsense. The film's inherent tension comes not from the shootouts and chases, but from its core ethical questions -- questions that ultimately have to be addressed, not only in movies, but in real life. "If you could cure cancer by killing one person, wouldn't you have to do it?" Obviously, there's no easy answer, and, whether you agree or disagree with the position taken by Extreme Measures, at least the film frames its response in an entertaining, and occasionally thought-provoking, package. Read full review

John Bailey's cinematography goes beyond the norm: Darkened rooms full of conspirators are as unsettling as Luthan's descent into an unlit subway tunnel. Danny Elfman, a mainstream film composer now that his alternative rock career is over, adds an apt score; he's angling for the late Bernard Herrmann's spot on Hollywood's scare scale. [27 Sept 1996, p.6E]

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.

Brisk and unsettling. Read full review

Extreme Measures is far from a classic. But it begins well and sustains its suspenseful tone for about two-thirds of its length...Grant's performance is one of the best things in the movie. Read full review

The action moves along at a good clip, and Apted, who made "Gorillas in the Mist," "Nell," "Coal Miner's Daughter," and the "7-Up" series of documentaries, doesn't allow the plot to bog down in details. But the so-called moral dilemma that Myrick's work poses - kidnapping the homeless and torturing them to death in the name of medical science - is laughable. Read full review

But as the increasingly far-fetched plot kicks in, the movie loses its personality, and plods toward a ludicrous conclusion that looks like the end result of a dozen desperate rewrites. [27 Sept 1996, p.04]

Apted's movie puts flesh - and a considerable amount of blood - on problems that usually get lost in the winds of empty political rhetoric. [27 Sept 1996, p.03]