Grade: C

Verdict: This hospital hostage melodrama needs emergency surgery. Is it in poor taste to say a movie concerning a heart transplant has its heart in the right place . . . and that's about it?

Details: Starring Denzel Washington and Robert Duvall. Directed by Nick Cassavetes. Rated PG-13 for language and violence. One hour and 58 minutes.

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Review: "John Q," which benefits greatly from the presence of Denzel Washington, is a messy message melodrama that takes on by-the-book hospital administrators, fat-cat doctors, we-know-nothing insurance agents and useless goverment agencies.

In the Happy Family setup, John Quincy Archibald (Washington), his wife, Denise (Kimberly Elise), and their adorable 10-year-old, Michael (Daniel E. Smith), may be financially strapped, but they've got each other. Even when Denise's car is repossessed.

Then it's discovered that little Michael needs a big-time heart transplant. He can either get his name on the donor list or he can go home to die. Unfortunately, John's HMO doesn't cover major medical expenses like this and he needs $75,000 just to get his boy's name registered.Turned down by an icy hospital adminstrator (Anne Heche) and the well-heeled chief of cardiology (James Woods), John goes through all the other bureaucratic hoops. Still no dice.

So John takes matters into his own hands. Meaning, he takes the ER, including its staff and patients, hostage. John Q. is now — yes! — John Q. Public, speaking out for all of us against a system that would let a child die because he doesn't have rich parents.

This is certainly a good message. Timely, too, with the costs of surgeries and hospital stays skyrocketing.

But the movie doesn't have a clue how to illustrate the issue without going all mushy-ludicrous on us. While the cops, led by crusty hostage negotiator Robert Duvall, and TV-friendly chief of police Ray Liotta set up outside, Washington has 45 minutes or so to fill in an empty script. He's passionate, funny, threatening, kindhearted, everything he can think of. But he can't keep this film afloat.

Especially when it gives each of the hostages a personality (sort of) and a back story (kind of). There's the pregnant couple. The sleazy guy and his battered girlfriend. The hysterical Hispanic woman. The snappy street-wise dude. And so on. And on.

Before long, the film starts playing like "General Hospital" crossed with a "Saturday Night Live" spoof of "Dog Day Afternoon." Director Nick Cassavetes, son of iconoclastic director John Cassavetes, has no idea how to shape this material into something even passably dramatic. Liotta looks embarrassed, as if he hadn't bothered to read the script, while Duvall, one of our great actors, is actually embarrassing. (He does little more than girimace and lick his lips.) Woods and Heche are good enough as the bad guy and the worse guy. But ultimately, it's all up to Denzel, who acts up a storm with no safe harbor in sight.

— Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution