Desperate Measures

It may not be perfect, but it's everything an action movie should be. Great characters (especially Keaton's great bad guy), explosions, chases, everything. So what if it's predictable. It's plot is better than you'd expect. Usually, the bad guy is just killed at the end. There is no other action movie like "Desperate Measures", because Andy Garcia protects the bag guy from the cops. If you like action movies, rent it. It's no best pic, but it's well worth watching.

Although following the formula for films in its class, including a saved dying child, a brave female doctor, a psychopath, and a dedicated detective trying to save his son, even the mandatory car chase sequence, I still found "Desperate Measure" an exciting and enjoyable thriller. The locations and presumably some sets are effective as is the dialogue and general situation set ups. It has great stunts, some by Keaton and Garcia themselves. The movie has not been well received by jaded critics who too easily criticize the formula elements, in my opinion. It has the high production values often found in many such films.

Andy Garcia is the "hero" in this predictable and ludicrous film. He plays Conner, a cop with a son who needs a bone marrow transplant to stay alive. Enter Michael Keaton as McCabe, a mad psychopathic criminal genius (aren't they all?) whose bone marrow is a perfect match. What follows is an irritating battle of wits between Conner and McCabe, who decides he'd like to bust outta the hospital using nothing but a half-swallowed ampoule of a magical elixir, a dislocated thumb and a cigarette lighter flint. Move over MacGuyver.

Garcia is particularly annoying as actor and character. His character is devoted to his son. Nothing wrong with that. Unless your devotion for your son means that EVERYONE ELSE'S life is meaningless and expendable. As McCabe tries to escape from the hospital Conner has to save McCabe's life many times because once dead, his bone marrow is no longer useful. Conner causes a cop to get shot as well as motorway carnage in his attempts to capture McCabe unharmed. I got increasingly more angry watching Garcia as Conner risk everyone he comes into contact with so that his son may have a chance of living. What about the rest of us? Don't we deserve a chance at life too? The Conner character seems to be rooted in the maverick cop tradition, playing by his own rules and deciding what is and isn't right. It's a world where a bully makes the rules and you follow them or face the consequences. Something along the lines of what happened in Germany in the Thirties...

Garcia as actor is annoying to the extreme, spending most of the film tearing about the place in a semi-crouch with one arm stiff by his side for some reason. He trots out his usual bits of actor's business that appear in most Garcia films. He does the scene where he grabs someone's head in both of his hands and speaks/shouts right into their face. He does the scene where he explosively loses he temper and kicks some furniture only to immediately regain control of himself and instantly become the ice-man. He does the scene where he shouts in anger at the top of his lungs, while his face looks as if he has just spent an afternoon staring at the test card. You know the stuff. We've seen it all before.

The film goes on for far too long and credibility is stretched time and again until even the densest viewer's intelligence is insulted. We're encouraged to sympathise with the Garcia character: his wife is dead, his son's dying, he's a cop, he's pretty, he is a devoted father etc etc, but really, all he is, is a self-centred fascist bully.

Keaton has to make flesh a one dimensional cliché of a character and he has a go but is on a losing wicket from the outset. How can you put a new and imaginative slant on the stock Mad Criminal Genius character? And Barbet Schroeder, what were you thinking? From the classic Barfly to this? Pity...

Andy Garcia and Michael Keaton star in the classic policeman vs bad guy story, but with a twist. Garcia is Frank Conner, a cop with a son named Matt who desperately needs a bone marrow transplant. Keaton is Pete McCabe, a hardened prisoner who seems to be the only person in the world who matches little Matt's bone marrow type. So eventually, Pete is talked into giving the marrow transplant, but in reality has a plan for escape, leaving Matt and his father, Frank, with nobody, Frank has no other choice but to find Pete and bring him back alive. This is where the cat and mouse plot begins, after nearly an hour of setting it up.

Desperate Measures had the potential to be so bad. I never would have imagined myself enjoying it this much. Thanks to a rainy day and a few hours to kill, I decided to watch this movie and it exceeded my expectations (which were not very high).

I still would not say this is a great movie. In fact, it is pretty average but Michael Keaton gives an enjoyable performance as a hardened prisoner. Normally, I would expect Garcia to be the bad guy and Keaton to be the cop, but Keaton honestly works out better as the bad guy.

The worst part of the movie has to be the kid, Matt, played by Joseph Cross. Nothing he says or does is what a young child his age would actually be thinking or saying. I am not even really disappointed so much with that, but his delivery was terrible. I know he is just a kid, but there are much better child actors who could have portrayed this much better. All in all, worth about a 7/10.

Michael Keaton and Andy Garcia are perfectly matched in this generally absorbing action thriller; you can sense right away that they had great chemistry working together, and they manage to create two characters more three-dimensional than the ones typically found in the genre. The film does have some plot holes (okay, Garcia can't kill Keaton. But why can't he shoot him in the leg or something?), and the last 20 minutes are pretty overblown, but the concept is thought-provoking and the filmmakers deserve credit for avoiding a cliched moralistic conclusion; indeed, the final scene of the film is very amusing. (**1/2)