film reviews

Extraordinary Measures

Hollywood always likes to pull at our heart strings. One of their more reliable ways they like to do that is by releasing a movie based on a true story. Extraordinary Measures is one of those movies, it tells the story of a father who isn’t quite ready to just let his children die. Based on the book by Geeta Anand and written for the screen by Robert Nelson Jacods, it tells the story of a fathers fight to help find a cure for Pompe disease, and the means he will go. John Crowley (Brendan Fraser) seems to have everything, he and his wife Aileen (Keri Russell) have three kids, but two of them of a rare genetic disease. Bound to wheelchairs and neither expected to live past nine years old, the Crowley’s try and make their life as normal as possible. Not happy with the doctors and their nothing else they can do approach, John seeks out alternatives and while doing so finds a doctor who’s research seems to be ahead of everyone else. That Doctor is Robert Stonehill (Harrison Ford) who spends all of his time inside a Nebraska lab. When John tries to contact Doctor Stonehill, he gets no answer, so he decides to just go and see him in person. Ford does his best Al Pacino impression throughout the film, and either mumbles or shouts most of his dialogue. John eventually talks Stonehill into using his knowledge to help human beings and not just for research. What happens next is, John quits his job so that he can move to Nebraska, so that he can use his business smarts to help get the funding Stonehill needs to continue his work. The story then starts to take the usual patch in movies like this and all though it doesn’t lose its meaning, it loses its originality. John ends up getting their company bought by a big pharmaceutical company, who then help develop the drug to help his children and other children affected with this disease, live a longer life. Fraser and Russell both plays the emotional parents great, and Fraser really plays the father who would do anything for his kids perfectly. Director Tom Vaughan (What Happens in Vegas) moves the story at the right pace, but doesn’t really do anything to help the movie in the end. The movie will find its audience, which are the ones who crave truth and real emotion in the films they see. The one thing that they won’t see though is anything Extraordinary; instead they will just see another ordinary film.

Brian Taylor