DONOR UNKNOWN is yet another venture into Michael Crichton country. The film's preachy undercurrents about the sanctity of the American family and the rights of illegal aliens pull at a slender thread of suspense until this overburdened thriller snaps.
Workaholic Nick Stillman (Peter Onorati) busts fraudulent clients for his insurance investigation company but spends little time with his wife Alice (Alice Krige). Working at full throttle strains Nick's heart, and he nearly dies. Complying with the wishes of Nick's surgeon, Dr. Bausch (Sam
Robards), Alice asks no questions when a healthy heart becomes available for transplant. Although the operation is a success, detail-oriented Nick frets that his donor Juan died in a police-pursuit car crash, whereas the late Juan's girlfriend Gloria (Christina Solis) insists illegal immigrant
Juan never learned how to drive.
With the aid of a detective Ray Haskell (Philip Lenkowsky) and the background checking of barrio priest Father Arias (Leo Garcia), Nick learns that the couple posing as Juan's grieving parents are too young to have borne him. Doubts about Dr. Bausch's methods lead Nick to former cop Nash Creed
(Clancy Brown), an organ harvester who collects coveted hearts, lungs, etc., by killing unwilling living donors. Slated to tout Bausch's proposed clinic at a fund-raiser, Nick refuses to quit digging for evidence even after Creed threatens Alice and their daughter, Danielle (Becky Herbst).
Although weakened by organ-rejection drugs injected by a suspicious Dr. Bausch, Nick confronts an unrepentant Creed at his boat, shoots him, and drowns him in the bay. After publicly discrediting Dr. Bausch, Nick expires, knowing that his sacrifice will end the killing cycle where the
disenfranchised are eliminated so the elite can have a second chance at life.
DONOR UNKNOWN assembles all the right ingredients for a chiller but leaves them unblended. Independent of each other, the medical chicanery, the illegal-alien exploitation, and the Stillmans' domestic dysfunction don't achieve any crescendo of suspense. The film implies that Nick's feverish
search for justice connects with his bulldog nature, but the plucky claims investigator seems more at the mercy of grinding plot mechanics than inner demons. Instead of pushing Nick into a maelstrom of self-doubts, the film portrays his conspiracy-busting in the routine manner of a 1970s TV
detective show. As a melodrama, DONOR UNKNOWN has its moments, but as a thriller, this movie could have used a transplant of healthy suspense. (Graphic violence, profanity, adult situations.) leave a comment
