Review of John Q (2002) by Diana P — 08 Dec 2010

"John Q" isn't a brilliant or perfect movie, but it's certainly not as horrible as critics make it out to be. I know why movie critics didn't like this movie. They didn't like it because of how textbook some of the elements are. I had a problem with this as well, but I still liked the films message, as well as Denzel Washington's performance.

Basically Washington plays this father who has a wife and son, and they aren't the richest people on the block. His son has heart failure, and the hospital tells him he doesn't have coverage for the surgery. So he decides to take the hospital hostage, until his son somehow is saved. Yeah...it's a pretty good idea for a movie.

Now yes like I said the movie is INSANELY contrived. The movie progresses in an expected manner, and all of the characters that Denzel has hostage are overly cliche, like a stupid rich white guy, and a whitty black guy who makes all those sassy remarks, a fat security guard, a dumb hot girl, and others. These elements and more kind of agitated me a lot...so that's probably why this movie wasn't amazing.

But there was something about it that I liked. Denzel Washington, in my opinion, gave a good performance. He did a good job at playing the father and he was very believable. Ray Liotta, Robert Duvall, and James Woods were all bad in my opinion. You can tell in the performances that they give that they really don't care...so that was kind of disappointing.

So the only good thing that I've mentioned so far is Washington's performance. So why is this movie watchable? To tell you the truth...I have no idea...but even though there were so many factors that would make a movie buff like me freak out...it was still entertaining in my opinion.

I guess you can call this movie a guilty pleasure...ahh actually not really because I didn't like it THAT much. It was alright. Like I said..the movie is contrived...but it's pretty entertaining. Not a must view..but certainly watchable.