John Q stars Denzel Washington as John Q, a poor guy at the end of his rope who commits a violent, yet understandably impossible-to-judge act of desperation to protect his son from the evils of corporate greed which have tragically seeped into the once-altruistic profession of Hypocrites.
John Q's son needs a heart transplant. Unfortunately, even though the hospital has an infinite number of hearts at their disposal (which are all, of course, stockpiled in their bottomless "Bag o' Hearts"), the heartless hospital management team chooses to sit and run their fingers through their hearts like Scrooge and a pile of gold coins.
In a supreme moment of tension (properly rendered completely non-dramatic by being revealed in the film's preview), the hospital takes Denzel's son off the heart donor list because his insurance won't cover the operation. There follows a proverbial dog day afternoon, during which Denzel takes the entire hospital hostage and threatens to shoot up the whole fucking place unless someone gives Junior a new heart, dammit!
It's appropriate that John Q is directed by Nick Cassavetes, the son of the late John Cassavetes. John Cassavetes, you might remember, is the much-beloved pioneer of independently made pieces of tedious, sleep-inducing shit such as The Killing of a Chinese Bookie and such adamant defenses of psychosis over rationality as Woman Under the Influence. Nick, evidently, has the desire to perpetuate his father's credo that morality is irrelevant and the only fundamental principle of human action is the group hug.
John Q, much like the works of art graciously exhibited for Alex DeLarge in A Clockwork Orange (and equally requiring toothpicks to be propped between one's eyelids to make it through even two minutes of this incompetent after-school special), attempts to manipulate the viewer into dropping all context and conveniently forgetting that... what was it again? Oh, that's right:
Hearts don't fucking grow on trees, you fucking morons!
John Q's need of a heart comes before:
- The reality that not every kid on the block can possibly have has his pick of a shiny new human heart
- Doctors are not your personal slaves
John Q will convince you (assuming you've taken some sort of liquid form of cocaine mixed with ecstasy and angel dust and injected it directly into your frontal lobe), that the "redistribution of wealth" isn't enough. We also need a redistribution of hearts. And it just so happens that the son of a guy with a gun pointing at a doctor should have an equal shot at getting one as the poor bastard who can afford the goddamn heart and isn't pointing a gun at anyone.
In the midst of the chaos that ensues upon Denzel flipping out on the set of General Hospital (during which he hopefully can spare a few extra bullets on Luke and Laura and the entire cast of E.R.), we undoubtedly will be subjected to at least one trigger-happy cop. In the case of John Q, this cardboard cut-out is apparently played by Ray Liotta. Liotta will help to obscure the movie's stupid yet absurd message of compassion versus greed by providing a counterexample to Washington's desperate father.
Whereas John Q is angry because he is "unjustly fucked", Liotta is angry because he lacks compassion. Mentally deficient audience members will feel compelled to choose between an empathetic Q-tip or a rage-driven Liotta.
"Oh no! I can't bear to deal with all these conflicting emotions! What do I do? I feel so funny! I don't want to be bad! Somehow, I can't completely endorse the violent actions of this caring but out-of-control father, but that other man... he's just so... well, mean! What the fuck am I to do? Well, there's only two alternatives. I guess I'm stuck with John Q!"
Though the movie's ending is up for grabs (i.e., is causally related to the reaction of test audiences) I am going to go out on a limb and predict it:
- John Q will eventually get shot dead by the police.
- It will be John Q's own heart that saves his son's life.
Whether Q will choose to donate his heart I'm not sure. Either way, it works. If he makes the choice, the choice will serve to emphasize Q's honest commitment to his compassionate cause. If he doesn't make the choice, voilá: you get instant symbolism and/or irony and/or some other annoying literary device anally fisted into the film's climax.
The film doesn't really want to convince us that what John Q does is right, but instead wants to undermine our ability to make moral judgments per se.
To quote Chekhov:
"There are a great many opinions in this world, and a good half of them are professed by people who have never been in trouble!"
