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Desperate dad John Crowley (Brendan Fraser) gives Dr. Stonehill (Harrison Ford) support in “Extraordinary Measures.” |
Tom Vaughn’s passionless “Extraordinary Measures” comes extraordinarily close to becoming a smart expose on the roles that corporate politics and old-fashioned capitalism play in the creation and manufacturing of lifesaving drugs for children living under a death sentence called Pompe disease.
We learn that Pompe, a form of muscular dystrophy, is classified as an “orphan” disease, which means that it afflicts so few people (less than 200,000) that big pharmaceutical companies don’t bother looking for a cure because there’s no profit in it.
You’d think with the current debate raging over American health care, “Extraordinary Measures” would be a terribly topical motion picture with something insightful to impart about health insurance and medical research.
Nope.
Stripped of its Hollywood A-list stars and feature-film budget, “Extraordinary Measures” is the sort of formula underdog drama that used to be referred to, in disparaging terms, as a “Disease of the Week” made-for-TV movie.
Everything about “Extraordinary Measures” screams made for TV, from Andrea Guerra’s cloying music that guides us to dramatically unearned moments of sadness and sentiment, to Andrew Dunn’s static cinematography that will lose little impact after being transferred to a smaller home screen.
The story is a familiar chestnut about a family in need of a medical miracle. They seek out the only person who can help, and he turns out to be a constantly P.O.-ed, finger-pointing, iconoclastic hothead who so disdains the corporate world that he refuses to have his genius be sullied by it, even if it means letting two children die.
They belong to John and Aileen Crowley, played by Brendan Fraser and Keri Russell. The Crowleys have medical bills of $40,000 a month, but they are lucky. They have insurance. And John makes good money at a large advertising firm. (Read more…)