Product Description

Jimmy Smits heads an all-star cast in this fast-pace romantic drama about medical students trying to meet the demands of love, ambition and competition. As they enter their third year of medical school, a group of young students prepare to leave the world of textbooks for the halls of a real hospital. Somehow, they must impress the chief of Surgery (Smits) while learning how to survive the life-and-death area of medicine and the complexity of their everyday lives.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #16598 in DVD
• Brand: Unknown
• Released on: 2005-06-07
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .25 pounds
• Running time: 103 minutes

Customer Reviews

Fast-paced entertaining look at med school
Adrian Pasdar and Diane Lane stand out as the med students who fall in love. The rest of the cast is just as talented and the majority of characters are three-dimensional (except the "bad guy"). This is an interesting look into the lives of med students: their duties, relationships with their patients and each other, their angst, ethical worries, and the political system within the medical community. There are enough plots and subplots to keep one's interest the entire time. There is never a dull moment and it turns out to be a fun movie and a well-written one also. One of my favorite movies of all time.

Very good movie about medical students
Very well taken movie that depicts the sacrifices and passion required for medical profession. Background score goes very well with the movie.

Been there, done that...
Made in 1990, Vital Signs still carries residual of the `80s with its cheesy soundtrack. The film follows the trials and tribulations of several third year medical students as they compete for limited internships and to do so they have to earn enough honour grades.

Vital Signs is an ensemble piece a la St. Elsewhere and, later, E.R. but without the former's quality writing and the latter's adrenaline-fueled pacing. In fact, Vital Signs feels like a feature-length TV show in the way it is paced and structured. The cast is fine if not somewhat bland, with the likes Adrian Pasdar (the nondescript protagonist in Near Dark) and Diane Lane (window dressing in The Cotton Club) who are given very little to work with. Pasdar is appealing enough with his hunky, all-American looks. He plays the kind of brash, young upstart that Tom Cruise was known for (Top Gun, Color of Money, etc.). Lane is as gorgeous-looking as ever and I'm sure many of her fans would certainly like to have her as their doctor...that is until she sends a little boy into cardiac arrest and dies (albeit accidentally). The chemistry between them is pretty good. However, their characters, as written, never transcend their stereotypes or the conventional situations that they find themselves in.

Vital Signs is a little too earnest but does have its heart in the right place, it just doesn't do anything to distinguish itself from countless other medical comedy/dramas on the big and small screen.