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Desperate Measures

1998, Movie, R, 100 mins

Desperate Measures: Review

DESPERATE MEASURES
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It's not that there isn't an interesting moral dilemma at the heart of this psychological thriller: Widowed San Francisco cop Frank Conner's (Andy Garcia) 9-year-old son Matt (Joseph Cross) is dying of leukemia, and sociopath Peter McCabe (Michael Keaton) is a perfect bone-marrow match. Conner persuades McCabe to act as a donor, but McCabe stages an escape as soon as he gets to the hospital, leaving a trail of dead and maimed cops and civilians in his wake. Trapped between the roles of police officer and father, Conner makes a series of criminally reckless decisions that allow McCabe to wreak havoc on an exponentially escalating scale. But director Barbet Schroeder's avowed love of American genre movies doesn't translate into any particularly interesting take on the old stories in which dire circumstances force the good guy to behave uncomfortably like a bad guy. Sure, Conner is morally compromised and McCabe is meant to have a certain sneaky charm, but those aren't subversions of the conventions -- those are the conventions, and have been for years. Lip service is paid to concern about Conner's ruthless determination to bring McCabe back alive, no matter what the consequences. But the consequences appear, well, inconsequential: Even upstanding Dr. Hawkins (Marcia Gay Harden), Matt's oncologist, agrees to do things Conner's way when any responsible person would be on the phone to the cops. As to Keaton's performance as McCabe, which is being hyped daring change of pace, he's a poor man's Dr. Lecter, a bundle of sneers and smart remarks who completely lacks the bad doctor's hypnotically sinister allure. (Ironically, the original Lecter, Brian Cox, is aboard in a generic supporting role.) As to the rest, it's the usual bang, bang, blow-it-up stuff. leave a comment --Maitland McDonagh
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