Word: lumet
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Critical Care is one of those movies that should come with a big disclaimer before the opening credits: WARNING: This film may contain scenes of grossly oversimplified moral dilemmas and awkward black humor. That would pretty much sum up the new release from veteran director Sidney Lumet and rookie screenwriter Steven S. Schwartz. Marred by crudely conceived, insultingly phony characters and a moral base that is prominent but insincere, the movie dies a slow, drawn out death...
What ensues is a drawn-out mess of a plot, involving seduction, blackmail and some randomly inserted surrealistic interludes featuring Wallace Shawn as the devil. Nothing in the health-care industry, Lumet asserts, is what it seems, and everyone is out to make a quick buck. That's all well and good, but with material so decidedly unenlightening, Lumet as a filmmaker should at least present it in an entertaining or thought-provoking manner. Instead, he putters along, trying to convince the audience that they are seeing something...
...attempt to thicken his cinematic stew, Lumet throws in countless non-characters running around trying desperately to make some sort of moral statement. Most prominent is Dr. Butz (Albert Brooks, in a role far beneath him), the resident money hungry alcoholic mastermind doctor emeritus at the hospital. Like so many in the film, Butz never gets to be a real person. He simply serves as a vehicle by which the screenwriter may embody every negative trait associated with the health care industry...
...Brooks is but one painful example of talent going to waste: it's another case of good actors trying their damnedest with bad lines. Kyra Sedgwick, James Spader, Albert Brooks and Helen Mirren are all fine, subtle performers; here, they are relegated to stale, two-dimensional stereo-types. Lumet may as well have subtitles put in key scenes: "This man is evil, because all he cares about is money. This man is good, because he really cares about making people better...
...savvy taxpayer. You want to know what all those computerized stealth thingies are for. Take either ? according to your mood: tragedy or satire ? Lumet or Kubrick, Fail-Safe (1964) or Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1963). And watch them nukes fall...