Product Details

• Actors: Hugh Grant, Gene Hackman, Sarah Jessica Parker, David Morse, Bill Nunn
• Directors: Michael Apted
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, NTSC
• Language: English
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Sony Pictures
• VHS Release Date: October 28, 1997
• Run Time: 118 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 0800196279
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #25,813 in Video (See Bestsellers in Video)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Extreme Measures loses credibility near the climax when it sacrifices its hold on reality, but this entertaining, intelligent thriller effectively applies a formulaic plot to the complicated ethics of medical research. It also gives Hugh Grant an opportunity to break free from lightweight comedy by playing an emergency room surgeon who discovers that a renowned neurologist (Gene Hackman) has been conducting secret experiments on patients. When Grant fails to save a patient whose body later mysteriously disappears from the morgue, his investigation leads to an underground community of healthy homeless people, some of whom have been test subjects in Hackman's revolutionary, but criminal research toward a cure for paralysis. Co-produced by actor-model Elizabeth Hurley and capably directed by Michael Apted, this otherwise conventional thriller rises above its limitations by asking morally complex questions that give its far-fetched plot an extra kick of dramatic impact. --Jeff Shannon

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars not all surgery is intended to cure, June 23, 2001

By	Peter Shelley "petershelley" (Marrickville, New South Wales Australia) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Extreme Measures [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Michael Palmer's novel owes a lot to Robin Crook's novel Coma which was filmed by Michael Crichton and uses the same hospital setting for scientific experimentation. Director Michael Apted may not have Crichton's touch for paranoid thrillers but clearly producer Elizabeth Hurley saw the property as a change of image vehicle for her then boyfriend Hugh Grant. Although here Grant only partly manages to suppress the self-conscious ticks and stammerings that he used in his cross-over hit Four Weddings and a Funeral, his apologetic body language still fits as a British doctor in an New York public hospital who stumbles across a medical conspiracy (the ole doctors playing God again). The screenplay by Tony Gilroy has Grant repeat phrases like "Let me just get this clear", as if being British gave him some language barrier, and his reaction to an obstructive laboratory attendant is amusing in his understated outrage, culminating in "You're quite a creepy person". For those who find Grant's schtick annoying, this perormance is one to be admired. The film is notable for Sarah Jessica Parker wearing an odd half-brown half-red hairdo (Madonna has a lot to answer for), Gene Hackman playing older than his real age, and the presentation of an underground world of darkness where the homeless and dispossessed live in the bowels of Grand Central Station. Although an art director's delight, one gets the feeling this is not an imaginary location. The mystery at the centre of the film involves the use of those considered to "have nothing" and making them "heroes", but this logic is on a par with the Nazi doctors who used concentration camp inmates for experimental research. And any medical facility which employs security guards who use their guns before their brains can't be good. Apted uses some tired thriller conventions like the foot caught in a railroad track with an oncoming train, the dark figure appearing in the background to see someone searching secret paperwork, and a fistfight in a descending elevator with the numbers lighting up, and Gilroy lingers so long on one plot point that we can easily guess that is a deception. The Danny Elfman score has suggestions of gothic malevolence but Apted misuses it.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A missed opportunity., June 20, 2005

By	S. Hebbron "S B H." (Leicester UK) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Extreme Measures (DVD)

The premise of this film is both excellent, interesting and credible. It had the ability to be "Coma" for the 90's, and aswell as raising the issue of the vulnerability of the patient role it highlights the occasional corrupt, explotative nature of the Medical profession. All very real fears, all quiet likely and delivered with believable conviction by a sterling cast. Grant is not always quite believable but this may have more to do with his established typecast as the eternal British fop and speaking as an Englishman I have to say both he and then Girlfiend Hurley (who produced this film) do overplay the Englishness with grating regularity! Hackman is brilliantly menacing, Parker is subdued and intelligently simmering.
The film gathers a sleuth like pace, like the very best of tense thrillers and then it sells out near the end and ruins the enitire work, divorcing itself from reality for the sake of cheap thrills. A terrible shame!

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A movie worth watching!, February 14, 2005

By	L Gontzes (Athens, Greece) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Extreme Measures does an EXCELLENT job of shedding light on the sensitive issue of how far is far enough in relation to scientific advancement and experimentation.
It deals with concepts such as where does one set the boundaries in regards to Medicine and Science, as well as touching on the topics of Morality, Change and Progress, and questions like do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or should it be the other way around? Most importantly, it brings attention to and succeeds in making people aware of the existence of such dilemmas, which have been characteristic of mankind throughout history.
Hugh Grant does a great job in his dramatic role as Dr Guy Luthan, as does Gene Hackman as Dr Lawrence Myrick. It is an amazing thriller with familiar elements from the X-Files. The plot, the setting, and the dialogues are all very good!
Extreme Measures is a very good movie, guaranteed to provide an evening's entertainment. In addition, it is one of those films that gets you and keeps you thinking long after it's over.
Overall, it is a movie definitely worth watching!