The scene: a big-time Hollywood studio. The players: a midlevel studio executive and a fast-talking Hollywood scriptwriter. The high-concept pitch: “A police detective’s son is dying of cancer, see? His single hope is a bone-marrow transplant, and soon! But the only matching donor is a homicidal psychopath who is serving a life sentence in prison!”
Would you make that movie? My guess is that you wouldn’t. But, in any case, we now have that movie, titled “Desperate Measures.”
The detective, Frank Conner, is played by Andy Garcia. His young son, Matthew (newcomer Joseph Cross), has leukemia, and thanks to a nocturnal (and illegal) break-in at a medical lab, Conner discovers that the only potential donor on the planet is Peter McCabe, an evil, dangerous sociopath (played by a sneering Michael Keaton) who is doing hard time in a maximum security prison.
Conner pleads with the cold-hearted McCabe to be a donor, and then with the prison board and the governor to allow him to do it. But despite taking McCabe to the hospital trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey, he manages to escape. (Rather easily, I thought.)
Up to this point, “Desperate Measures” is merely sluggish and ridiculous, but it reaches new heights of inanity as we watch McCabe scurrying around the hospital like a lab rat, taking over computer operations, grabbing a few hostages, watching the action on TV monitors, crawling through air chutes and generally making the entire San Francisco Police Force look like the Keystone Cops being led by Inspector Clouseau.
Other actors showing up include the usually splendid Marcia Gay Harden (“The Spitfire Grill”) as Matthew’s loving and sympathetic doctor, and British thespian Brian Cox (“The Boxer”) as the befuddled chief of police who must watch his men get wasted as Conner lets McCabe get away again and again. (His bone-marrow is useless if he’s dead.)
Buried in this compost-heap is some kind of ethical dilemma — the idea that once Conner turns desperate enough to let others die to save his son, he is no better than McCabe. But attaching that kind of moral ambiguity to a movie like this is akin to dealing with the war in Bosnia on “Suddenly Susan.”
What’s most astounding about “Desperate Measures” is that it is directed by Barbet Schroeder (“Reversal of Fortune,” “Barfly”), who came to Hollywood from France a few years back to make some American genre films. There is nothing about the film’s look or feel that suggests any of Schroeder’s proven talent. It makes me think that perhaps it is high time for him to grab a plane back to Paris to collect his thoughts and re-evaluate his cinematic priorities.
”DESPERATE MEASURES”
(star)
Directed by Barbet Schroeder; written by David Klass; photographed by Luciano Tovoli; production designed by Geoffrey Kirkland; edited by Lee Percy; music by Trevor Jones. A Tri-Star Pictures release; opens Friday. Running time: 1:40. MPAA rating: R. Violence, strong language.
THE CAST
Peter McCabe …………. Michael Keaton
Frank Conner …………. Andy Garcia
Jeremiah Cassidy ……… Brian Cox
Samantha Hawkins ……… Marcia Gay Harden
Nate Oliver ………….. Erik King
Vargus ………………. Efrain Figueroa
Matthew Conner ……….. Joseph Cross
