Critical Care . Newcity Chicago . 11-03-97

Critical Care

DIRECTED BY: Sidney Lumet

REVIEWED: 11-03-97

While screenwriter Steven Schwartz's words never rumble onto the screen like Paddy Chayefsky's did in Lumet's 1975 "Network," there is enough outrage at contemporary managed-health fiascoes here to fill several movies and a couple of op-ed columns. James Spader is a third-year intensive-care resident at a slightly futuristic, money-driven urban hospital, who becomes enmeshed in the legalities surrounding the case of a comatose man being kept alive for his estate rather than whether he has any chance of recovery. Some of the acting is awful -- turn your eyes away from Kyra Sedgwick as a gold-digging airhead -- and a subplot involving Wallace Shawn as an emissary from hell is subpar. But there is the spectacle of Albert Brooks as a doddering alcoholic who runs the ICU, cutting to the heart of the film's concerns behind old-age makeup and with vaudeville-sharp timing. With Helen Mirren, Jeffrey Wright, and behind a wimple and lofting, winged white headgear, Anne Bancroft.

--Ray Pride

Full Length Reviews
Critical Care

Capsule Reviews
Critical Care
Critical Care
Critical Care

Other Films by Sidney Lumet
Gloria
Night Falls on Manhattan

Film Vault Suggested Links
Soul Food
Miami Rhapsody
A Slipping-Down Life

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