Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
If you totally suspend belief at premise, maybe decent, February 26, 2005
Did anyone who worked on this film ever hear of the concept of TRIAGE? No, I am not a healthcare professional, but I have been in ERs in three states myself or with family and friends. No patient is ever brought in and told to just 'sign in, we'll be with you in a minute.' You're interviewed by a triage nurse who assigns you a rating based on battlefield assessments:
1. They'll recover on their own if they're not seen to. This category has the longest to wait.
2. They'll need your help to recover. Generally, this is the priority one patient.
3. They need your help, but they're not going to recover. Priority two---because they can save lives if they see priority one first.
If they'd just done their research, they'd have known this--and I'm certain the writers could have found a more believable premise to slam the healthcare industry. For example, waiting on approval for your HMO to refer you to a specialist, waiting on board approval for surgery, etc.
What's the plot? Harry Fertig (Ben Kingsley's) son is ill with what they think is the flu. He and his wife Sara (Amy Irving) take their son to the ER. They're told to 'sign in and sit down.' As their son's condition worsens, Fertig pleas with a doc and nurse for help--they're on break. They finally go to take their son to another hospital and he dies in the cab from a ruptured appendix. In justice, Fertig shoots the doctor, nurse, and ward clerk. High powered and high profile attorney with serious ambitions, Roy Bleakie (Baldwin) is hired by Fertig's boss to defend Fertig and get him off on an NGRI (Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity) defense. The catch: Fertig doesn't want off. While one shrink will testify that he is insane and he could rest on that, Fertig believes that copping the plea lessens the 'just' killing of the three people. As Bleaky gets further and further, into the case, he realizes the man hiring him to defend Fertig may have other motives.
If you ignore that the initial setup of the film is highly flawed, "Confession" is an interesting study of society, right and wrong, fathers and sons. Is it right to kill people whose uncaring kill a member of your family? Is it acceptable to ruin a colleague for your own ambitions? And, when can you not look away?
This is a great film to rent once, but I would not purchase this film for my collection. It has limited appeal as a rerun.
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9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Kingsly and Balwin come through again, July 10, 2001
Finally a movie about a man who has murdered but doesn't want to pin the blame for his actions on someone else. An emergency room receptionist, a nurse and a doctor ignore the pleadings of a desperate father (Kingsly) to help his five year old son who is critically ill. The son dies of a highly treatable burst appendix on the way to a different hospital. Six weeks later the father kills these three people and turns himself into the police. What follows is a complex story about politics, a man's grappling with right and wrong before his own God and a lawyer (Baldwin) who, caught in the middle of the devine and the corrupt, faces the biggest moral decision of his life. The performances by all are excellent and I highly recommend this movie.... It's not a perfect film but beats most of the low-brow films resting on the shelves these days.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
What do you think of triage now?, July 8, 2008
It's interesting to see all these reviews focused in on the "ludicrous" plot hook -- a sick child is allowed to get worse and die in an ER waiting room. I wonder what all the reviewers think now, when (as I write this) leading the news is the story of a woman who died in an ER waiting room waiting to be seen.
Not that this small bit of vindication helps the movie in any way. It's still meandering, rough, less than compelling.
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