Desperate Measures

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General		Extras
Category	Action Thriller	Theatrical Trailer(s)	Yes, 1
Rating		Other Trailer(s)	None
Year Released	1997	Commentary Tracks	None
Running Time	100 minutes	Other Extras	Cast & Crew Interviews Featurette - Untitled (4 mins) Featurette - Making Of (11 mins) Cast & Crew Biographies
RSDL/Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Movie
Region	4	Director	Barbet Schroeder
Distributor	Roadshow Home Entertainment	Starring	Michael Keaton Andy Garcia Brian Cox Marcia Gay Harden
RRP	$34.95	Music	Trevor Jones

    Desperate Measures is a movie which stretches implausibility so far that we cannot suspend our disbelief, and thus fails to engage us. The scenario is so far-fetched that I cannot believe anyone seriously thought they could make anything out of this movie. It stars Andy Garcia as Frank Conner, an FBI agent who has a son with leukaemia. His son needs a bone marrow transplant to survive. The only person with compatible bone marrow is Peter McCabe (Michael Keaton). McCabe is a psychopathic killer, locked up for life with no chance of parole for multiple cold-blooded homicides. Frank goes to McCabe and asks him to donate his bone marrow to help his son. McCabe reluctantly agrees. McCabe escapes whilst undergoing the procedure and the rest of the movie is spent in Frank chasing McCabe down.

    So what is so hard about suspension of disbelief for this movie?

    Implausibility 1: We have to accept that Frank can break into the FBI building, ambush a security guard and gain access to confidential tissue typing information on prisoners, all without any consequences.

    Implausibility 2: We have to accept that this type of tissue-typing information exists in the first place.

    Implausibility 3: We have to accept that Frank believes that a psychopath like McCabe is going to donate his bone marrow without any attempt to escape out of the goodness of his heart.

    Implausibility 4: We have to accept that multiple doctors, and Dr Samantha Hawkins (Marcia Gay Harden) in particular are willing to risk being shot to tend to individual patients in a busy metropolitan hospital, to the exclusion of all of their other patients.

    Implausibility 5: We have to accept that despite killing multiple civilians and police officers and having the entire San Francisco Police force after him, McCabe is still taken into custody again alive, by Frank acting alone.

    Implausibility 6: We have to accept that having been caught, McCabe then gives his bone marrow willingly to Frank's son.

    I could handle one or perhaps two extreme implausibilities in the one movie. However, this movie simply asks us to believe in too many improbabilities.

    This makes Desperate Measures simply a jaded action thriller with some reasonable action sequences and some mild tension and a somewhat predictable ending. Michael Keaton is wasted in his role. It is badly scripted, and rather than being sinister, he simply becomes dreary.

Video

    The transfer is presented at an aspect ratio of 1.78:1, 16x9 enhanced.

    The transfer was crystal clear and razor sharp at all times. Shadow detail was spot on, and no low level noise marred the transfer at any point.

    The colours were all well saturated, though much of this movie is shot in somewhat muted tones.

    No MPEG artefacts were seen.

    Film-to-video artefacts consisted of somewhat frequent vertical jumps in the picture at scene changes. These were all minor, and I have seen this type of artefact before, but this transfer had this artefact to such an extent that it became irritating.

    Film artefacts were very few and far between.

Audio

    Dialogue was very occasionally hard to hear, with a few lines lost here and there, but was very clear otherwise.

    There were no audio sync problems with this movie that I could detect. This is something that I have not been able to report in a long while with Roadshow Home Entertainment discs, and was a major relief.

    The musical score was written by Trevor Jones, and consists of both poignant and stirring music. It was present often, and was aggressively mixed into the surrounds, adding to the ambience of the movie nicely.

     The surround channels were frequently utilized for music, special effects and ambience. An aggressive enveloping presence was created by this soundtrack, right from the very beginning, and sustained throughout the entire length of the movie.

    The .1 channel was moderately heavily used for music and for effects, such as explosions. It was well-integrated into the overall mix, and enhanced it nicely.

Menu

Theatrical Trailer

Featurette - Untitled

Featurette - Making Of

Cast & Crew Interviews

Cast & Crew Biographies

    The video quality is very good, with only very minor problems.

    The audio quality is also very good, and very enveloping, with only very minor problems with some dialogue intelligibility.

    The extras are standard Roadshow Home Entertainment fare.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Michael Demtschyna
21st January 1999