Review of Extraordinary Measures (2010) by Chads — 24 Jan 2010

Since neither Harrison Ford nor Brendan Fraser speak in a thick Italian accent, how could "Extraordinary Measures" ever begin to measure up with George Miller's much-lauded "Lorenzo's Oil"? It can't, but that's okay, since this story about the cure for Pompei disease will absorb the moviegoer, despite both actors' boring American accents, with its pointed depiction of the politics and commerce that comes with the territory of the drug manufacturing business.

For the most part, such misshapen priorities practiced by these biochemical overseers help transform the inevitable melodrama generated by the Crowleys(Fraser and Keri Russell) and their dying moppets into real drama, because most people are sick and tired of greedy corporate types.

John Crowley, a corporate suit himself, knows how the game is played, in which saving lives can sometimes be an afterthought to the more pressing matter of long-term profitability. He plays the game. Dr.

Stonehill(Harrison Ford), the scientist that John recruits from the University of Nebraska, on the other hand, abhors compromise, and it's this dynamic between the commonsensiblist and the naif that drives this imperfect film toward near-transcendence of the made-for-television trappings that the sick child sub-genre of "chick-flicks" entails.

Apart from the visual flair of the "Mad Max" helmer, what really busted "Lorenzo's Oil" out from the Lifetime movie ghetto were the harrowing scenes that depicted the boy's degenerative ailment as a trial of hellish proportions, which went beyond the by-the-numbers emotional manipulation of doomed children battling their oncoming untimely demises.

The moviegoer felt Lorenzo's pain, and the parents' pain, in spades, because the kid really looked like he was dying. The filmmaker wasn't going for a die-cute, like the little boy in "Extraordinary Measures" who can't throw bread to a pond full of ducks, or the little girl who needs help winning a stuffed penguin from a carnival game.

Only the hardest of hearts, however, won't respond to this shameless, but effective attempt, to garner audience sympathy. So while rallying moviegoers to root for dying children is like shooting fish in a barrel, "Extraordinary Measures" does manage to put capitalism on trial, in scenes such as the one where John takes desperate measures to save his children, after he's told what is and what's not cost-efficient.