Excellent acting by Garcia & Whitaker can't save this dog

rlange-3

It starts off well with the first of four vignettes, pulled through by an outstanding acting job by Forest Whitaker. The second vignette is OK, because Andy Garcia does a great job as the villain. But Geller is once again sadly disappointing, and by the middle of the movie it starts to disintegrate. By the last act, it is so full of plot holes it's like a piece of moldy Swiss cheese.

Kevin Bacon is supposed to be an emergency room doctor, but acts like someone being electrocuted while having a tantrum. A woman he loves has been bitten by a snake and he clearly has no real idea about how to handle the situation -- can he be that incompetent? Some research tech is screaming at him that she must have a transfusion within 24 hours or she will die. But she isn't even given an IV. He runs around screaming at everyone supposedly trying to find this rare blood type, but this is not the first line of defense for Russel's viper envenomation. It would not have been that difficult to make this episode realistic, but nothing short of a Valium transfusion would have saved Bacon's character. A transfusion is obtained and she is magically transformed into the picture of health. There's a monitor but she doesn't even have a line in; I guess they ditched realism for the ooh gosh wow picture of the monitor. Funny how that monitor doesn't even seem to be attached to the patient. This is the kind of thing you would expect in an ultra low budget flick. Most people have been to a hospital and know things just don't work that way.

It's not just the technical medical aspects that are botched. Geller is well protected by all kinds of bodyguards, but in spite of her being in a clearly precarious state of mental health all attendants melt away to allow her to climb out on the roof in an attempted suicide. Nobody notices she is missing. And Bacon runs up what must be at least 40 flights of stairs, again suddenly unmolested by the previously ubiquitous bodyguards who have conveniently disappeared. He arrives with no sign of fatigue and rescues Geller in what has to be one of the hokiest scenes ever to make it into a movie. It's just so poorly acted and set up as to make the entire sequence laughable, especially the diaphanous garment taking flight at the end. This is pure corn by this point. I was hoping they would just come crashing down and the movie would end.

Then Geller, who has just attempted an act of suicide is discharged without any apparent evaluation. It's OK because Bacon and Geller hugged each other so she's just fine and ready for a casual discharge. They aren't even trying to make this believable anymore.

A cheesy bow tie follows to wrap the movie up and try to integrate the vignettes. At least the epilogue was over quickly.

score 3/10

rlange-3 15 July 2008

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1911518/