Lack of passion makes medical drama less than 'Extraordinary'

Posted January 21, 2010 10:00 pm

Dann Gire

Tom Vaughn's passionless "Extraordinary Measures" comes extraordinarily close to becoming a smart expose on the roles that corporate politics and old-fashioned capitalism play in the creation and manufacturing of lifesaving drugs for children living under a death sentence called Pompe disease.

We learn that Pompe, a form of muscular dystrophy, is classified as an "orphan" disease, which means that it afflicts so few people (less than 200,000) that big pharmaceutical companies don't bother looking for a cure because there's no profit in it.

You'd think with the current debate raging over American health care, "Extraordinary Measures" would be a terribly topical motion picture with something insightful to impart about health insurance and medical research.

Nope.

Stripped of its Hollywood A-list stars and feature-film budget, "Extraordinary Measures" is the sort of formula underdog drama that used to be referred to, in disparaging terms, as a "Disease of the Week" made-for-TV movie.

Everything about "Extraordinary Measures" screams made for TV, from Andrea Guerra's cloying music that guides us to dramatically unearned moments of sadness and sentiment, to Andrew Dunn's static cinematography that will lose little impact after being transferred to a smaller home screen.

The story is a familiar chestnut about a family in need of a medical miracle. They seek out the only person who can help, and he turns out to be a constantly P.O.-ed, finger-pointing, iconoclastic hothead who so disdains the corporate world that he refuses to have his genius be sullied by it, even if it means letting two children die.

They belong to John and Aileen Crowley, played by Brendan Fraser and Keri Russell. The Crowleys have medical bills of $40,000 a month, but they are lucky. They have insurance. And John makes good money at a large advertising firm.

Their issue is time. Pompe victims usually die by the age of 10, and little Megan (Meredith Droeger) is 9. Her younger brother Patrick (Diego Velazquez) has Pompe, her other brother John Jr. (Sam Hall) doesn't.

Desperate, John searches for help on the Internet until he finds Dr. Robert Stonehill (executive producer Harrison Ford), a research scientist at the University of Nebraska.

A surly, academic cowboy, Stonehill is slow to warm to John's pleas for help in stemming Pompe in his kids.

Actually, everything in this movie is slow to warm, or just plain slow.

The Scottish-born Vaughan, who directed the modest 2006 drama "Starter for 10," pumps little energy or urgency into this drama, loosely "inspired by" the story of the Crowleys.

Fraser and Russell come off as shallow stiffs, which suggests Vaughan directed this film with too many safety belts on his cast. Both Fraser ("Gods and Monsters") and Russell ("Waitress") can be compelling actors, when inspired by gifted directors.

Perhaps Vaughan felt intimidated by having his star also be his boss, and so he let Ford have an undirected pass on creating Stonehill as an irritating, one-note bore whose 11th-hour epiphany feels forced and phony.

Not so ironically, Stonehill's character is "an amalgam" of various doctors who helped the Crowleys, and who presumably didn't play rock music too loud or shriek "Get out of my lab!" to staffers.

Like Tom Hanks' Fed in the fact-based "Catch Me If You Can" and Robert De Niro's Navy man in the fact-based "Men of Honor," Stonehill never existed in real life.

He barely exists here.

<p class="factboxheadblack">"Extraordinary Measures"</p>

<p class="News"><b>Starring:</b> Harrison Ford, Brendan Fraser and Keri Russell</p>

<p class="News"><b>Directed by:</b> Tom Vaughan</p>

<p class="News"><b>Other:</b> A CBS Films release. Rated PG. 106 minutes</p>

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