Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #55760 in DVD
• Released on: 1998-02-18
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Full Screen, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 109 minutes

Customer Reviews

What a great movie !
Sidney Lumet directed some classics (Network, Serpico, Dog Day afternoon) but lately none of his movies ever did much of a business (A Stranger among us, Guilty as Sin, Gloria) but this one is surprisingly good. It has wonderful casts that include James Spader, Kyra Sedwick, Helen Mirren and Albert Brooks.

The movie started out like a cheap hospital comedy but along way the way it got serious with issues like health care, insurance, lawsuit and whether it is ethical to let go a patient that has no chance of survival. It is funny and heart warming as well. Given the price of the DVD, it is a must buy. The DVD provided both WS and FS versions of the movie but not much of extra features but for the price, you can't complaint.

Great satire on the health care system
I'm a physician and I thought this was a great commentary on the health care system and not too far off the mark. James Spader gets caught in a catfight between two daughters of a dying man, either of which stands to inherit $10 million, depending on when the old man goes. Helen Mirren is the angel of Mercy/Death who is Spader's Jiminy Cricket. Ed Hermann plays the sleazy hospital attorney, and Albert Brooks is hysterical as an old physician who has the perspective of his many years. His memorable line about physicians: "We used to be gods. Now we are glorified auto mechanics."

Starts out comedy, ends up serious. Liked it.
I thought I wasn't going to like this movie, but I ended up liking it a lot. It started out as a comedy that was pretty silly. But about half way through, the tenor of the movie changed and it became a much more serious look at the ethics of prolonging the life of terminally ill patients. This part of the movie grabbed me and even made me cry as I watched the main character try to sort through the maze of conflicting emotions surrounding a decision of whether or not to terminate a life.