Even though it has the premise of a disease-of-the-week movie, Extraordinary Measures is both compelling - seriously - and dramatically satisfying. Harrison Ford gives one of his best (nonaction) performances in years, and even Brendan Fraser is palatable. It's definitely a three-hankie movie, so it's sort of a chick flick. Fellas, you should watch this at home, alone, with the curtains pulled.
John (Fraser) and Aileen (Keri Russell) Crowley have two young children with a rare disease called Pompe that damages muscle and nerve cells in the body. Both children are wheelchair bound but in generally high spirits, thanks to wonderful, supporting parents. (They have a third child who does not have the disease.) Time is running out on the kids, though, because Pompe victims typically do not live to double-digit ages. In desperation, Crowley turns to researcher Robert Stonehill (Ford), a cranky, iconoclastic scientist who cares only about his work and, sometimes, fishing. Stonehill has a remarkable new theory for the treatment of Pompe, but he's never tested it on anything, let alone anyone; his field is in theoretical, rather than applied, research. But the persistent Crowley wears him down, and - long story short - agrees to form a partnership with him, a foundation dedicated to finding a cure for the disease, a foundation to which moneyed people can donate funds.
What makes this particular film work isn't that there's a race against time or even that there are adorable kids who are basically at death's door. No, it's because director Tom Vaughan chooses to have Crowley's daughter Megan (Meredith Droeger) act as the face of the disease, and she's a charming, happy child. Her personality is so magnetic that you could easily forget she was riddled with the debilitating disease, were it not for the wheelchair.
Vaughan doesn't waste his time playing on the audience's sympathies in abundance. He focuses on the machinations that Crowley and Stonehill have to undergo to fund, research, and bring to market this miracle cure - actions that are either in praise or an indictment of the real-life politicking needed to get medicine to drugstores. Crowley and Stonehill form a company, which they sell for funding, and then the funders want to make more money and so are bloodless beasts (maybe not), and all the while the two Crowley kids are slowly getting a little worse.
The movie manages to be sentimental and touching without even a hint of cloying insincerity, and that's a remarkable achievement nowadays. I mean, think about it. Even people who don't watch a lot of movies have become jaded to story lines that we just know are trying to manipulate us one way or another. We know we're being played, and we don't really care, and when that manipulation is too obvious, we just turn to something else for our entertainment fix. But we're not really being manipulated here at all. The film honestly, and not melodramatically, presents us with a real-life crisis that has distinctly and believably human element to it; without it, we may as well be discussing an Olympic hopeful's chances at the gold after learning she has contracted vasculitis.
Ford is terrific. The man can do drama. It's worth noting that this is the film since Return of the Jedi in which Ford was billed somewhere other than first. It's true, he's almost 70 years old, but the guy still has charisma to burn. Whether he's doing a slow burn or raging at the elementally specious bureaucracy surrounding him, he is nothing short of believable. He's so good that you forget he was Han Solo or Jack Ryan or Indiana Jones and think that, for a short while, he's Dr. Stonehill.
Now, admittedly, this isn't a movie for everyone. And even though it's not overtly manipulative, it's still a tugger of heartstrings. So be warned. It's tough not to be affected by it, a sure sign of a well-made movie.
John (Fraser) and Aileen (Keri Russell) Crowley have two young children with a rare disease called Pompe that damages muscle and nerve cells in the body. Both children are wheelchair bound but in generally high spirits, thanks to wonderful, supporting parents. (They have a third child who does not have the disease.) Time is running out on the kids, though, because Pompe victims typically do not live to double-digit ages. In desperation, Crowley turns to researcher Robert Stonehill (Ford), a cranky, iconoclastic scientist who cares only about his work and, sometimes, fishing. Stonehill has a remarkable new theory for the treatment of Pompe, but he's never tested it on anything, let alone anyone; his field is in theoretical, rather than applied, research. But the persistent Crowley wears him down, and - long story short - agrees to form a partnership with him, a foundation dedicated to finding a cure for the disease, a foundation to which moneyed people can donate funds.
What makes this particular film work isn't that there's a race against time or even that there are adorable kids who are basically at death's door. No, it's because director Tom Vaughan chooses to have Crowley's daughter Megan (Meredith Droeger) act as the face of the disease, and she's a charming, happy child. Her personality is so magnetic that you could easily forget she was riddled with the debilitating disease, were it not for the wheelchair.
Vaughan doesn't waste his time playing on the audience's sympathies in abundance. He focuses on the machinations that Crowley and Stonehill have to undergo to fund, research, and bring to market this miracle cure - actions that are either in praise or an indictment of the real-life politicking needed to get medicine to drugstores. Crowley and Stonehill form a company, which they sell for funding, and then the funders want to make more money and so are bloodless beasts (maybe not), and all the while the two Crowley kids are slowly getting a little worse.
The movie manages to be sentimental and touching without even a hint of cloying insincerity, and that's a remarkable achievement nowadays. I mean, think about it. Even people who don't watch a lot of movies have become jaded to story lines that we just know are trying to manipulate us one way or another. We know we're being played, and we don't really care, and when that manipulation is too obvious, we just turn to something else for our entertainment fix. But we're not really being manipulated here at all. The film honestly, and not melodramatically, presents us with a real-life crisis that has distinctly and believably human element to it; without it, we may as well be discussing an Olympic hopeful's chances at the gold after learning she has contracted vasculitis.
Ford is terrific. The man can do drama. It's worth noting that this is the film since Return of the Jedi in which Ford was billed somewhere other than first. It's true, he's almost 70 years old, but the guy still has charisma to burn. Whether he's doing a slow burn or raging at the elementally specious bureaucracy surrounding him, he is nothing short of believable. He's so good that you forget he was Han Solo or Jack Ryan or Indiana Jones and think that, for a short while, he's Dr. Stonehill.
Now, admittedly, this isn't a movie for everyone. And even though it's not overtly manipulative, it's still a tugger of heartstrings. So be warned. It's tough not to be affected by it, a sure sign of a well-made movie.