Product Description

Ken Harrison is an artist that makes sculptures. One day he is involved in a car accident, and is paralyzed from his neck. All he can do is talk, and he wants to die. In hospital he make friends with some of the staff, and they support him when he goes to trial to be allowed to die.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #16384 in DVD
• Brand: Warner Brothers
• Released on: 2007-05-22
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.66:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: 1.00 pounds
• Running time: 118 minutes

Amazon.com
In interviews, Richard Dreyfuss often refers to Whose Life Is It Anyway? as having been made at the nadir of his substance-abuse problem in the 1980s. Yet it's not too bad. Based on the hit Broadway play, it's a debate about the ethics of euthanasia and one person's right to choose whether to live or die. Dreyfuss plays a sculptor who, after a car accident, is left a paraplegic. Appalled at the prospect of a life in which he has no control of anything, he pleads with hospital authorities to help him die. When they refuse, he takes them to court. Dreyfuss brings great passion to a role in which he can't even use his body; the humor is often pitch-black, but it works, both as a script and as a cinematically opened-up version of a play. --Marshall Fine

Customer Reviews

Stunning.
I saw this one in high school. I was amazed that I hadn't heard of it before seeing as Richard Dreyfuss is a great actor. The only film I can think of that deals extensively with euthanasia (the right to live or die). Excellent performance by Dreyfuss, great story, great directing. It's a crime that the studio hasn't released this film so the price will drop. It's a great film! This is a must have for any film collector.

Such a good film, priced way to high for average viewer.
Its been out since 1981 already. Don't you think its time the price got lowered for the average person. I've been looking for it second hand for years. Tell the studio to lower the price please.

Extraordinary compelling, unforgettable, frequently painful, yet intriguing!
Ken Harrison (Richard Dreyfuss) is an artist... His fingers make things of beauty...

When he lived through a car accident that left him paralyzed from the neck down, we understood why he wanted to be left alone to die...

Ken moved from a world of life and creation, to an empty world where he can't move even a single finger...

Lying under the white sheets of the hospital bed, he is subjected to stress under the shock of his another reality... The artist has gone... The creator of an art expressed in all its different dimensions, round in relief, imagery, symbolism, all vanished in seconds...

But his human spirit remains alive under the severity, the compulsion, the threats of his new reality...

Ken was a cunning sculptor, skillful, ingenious in the use of his mind and hands... He is now charming, capable to seduce the whole nursing staff by pillow talk...

The movie deals with many hypothesis about the right to die...

Does a patient have the right to choose to die? Does he have the right to refuse life-sustaining medical treatment, even if that means certain immediate or accelerated death?

Doctor Emerson (John Cassavetes) wants to prolong the life of Ken... He wants him to live his disability as quadriplegic even feeling so down... For him, everybody has their own struggles in life...

Richard Dreyfuss is superb as Ken Harrison, a quick moving mind, true and clever, who displays unpleasant, troublesome reality... He relies on his intelligence and energy rather than his looks and charisma to win his fight, his right to die...

John Cassavetes i excellent in his role, intense as Dr. Emerson, the Chief of Staff... He plays the role with personality, ability and style dealing with the problem with absolute professionalism...

Christine Lahti (Dr. Clare Scott) is very appealing, too powerful, tempting and charming, tolerant and understanding, along with big heart... She is convincing, closer than most to truth or at least to the subjective reality of her patient...

The film is extraordinary compelling, unforgettable, frequently painful, yet intriguing!

What we learn about ethics and how to make decisions may be useful in this real world... The path taken really does transform the meaning...