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Sorry, this movie sucks

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Many reviewers have mentioned "cat and mouse games." I think what they mean is that everybody seems to be pursuing everybody else and nobody ever stops to take a breath, including the viewer.Garcia's nine-year-old boy has leukemia and his life can be saved only by a bone marrow transplant from a compatible donor. Only one such donor is available and he's a lifelong murderer with an IQ of 150. That means he's eligible for MENSA but I doubt they have a chapter in the San Francisco prison system.San Francisco doesn't have a hospital like this one either. It's the emptiest, darkest hospital you've ever imagined, and it's full of laundry chutes, steam pipes, cross-highway walkways, underground tunnels, and varied niches. If you had to characterize the movie with one still shot, there would be a man pressed against a brick wall, next to a corner, forearm cocked upward, pistol in hand. After evacuation the hospital is nothing more than a gray gaunt shell.There's that kid, too. Kids are usually a big nuisance in a movie, but this one manages to get by -- no more than that. The kid, Garcia's son, is kidnapped by escaped killer Michael Keaton. He's a strong, brave kid despite his leukemia and we can see the bond between him and Keaton in the offing.Andy Garcia's character is the most complex because he's torn between two allegiances -- his son and the values of the society that both he and his son are members of. Would you let your child die or would you rather save his life by loosing a killer on the city street? You see what I mean? Keaton's not bad, by the way. I mean, his character is pure evil until his redemption but Keaton's performance is pretty good. He plays the villain as mean, not suave. He's not given any unique traits but that's the writers' problem, not the actors. It's a curious coincidence but when Keaton first begins to make demands on the corrections officers in return for agreeing to the transplant, he complains that the cigarettes he's given are stale. He and I worked in a movie together, the unforgettable Whatever It Was. I was a bar tender and Keaton was a customer and when the cameras weren't rolling he examined a pack of Property Department cigarettes on the bar and asked if they were stale. "Only if you call a year old 'stale,'" I said.Little use is made of the Bay Area locations. Nobody hangs by a thread from the Golden Gate bridge or races through Chinatown. Not until the end, anyway, when there is an explosion of action on highways and bridges.Very little of the story is actually plausible and if constant tension is your thing then your thing is congruent with this movie.

DESPERATE MEASURES is one of those "high concept" thrillers that the 1990s were so fond of: an entire movie written around a single sentence premise guaranteed to garner interest. This time around, it's simple: a cop's dying child needs a bone marrow transplant and the only matching donor is a jailed killer.What follows is a movie that starts out on a fairly tense level before gradually become more and more preposterous as it goes on. It soon transpires that the killer, played with relish by Michael Keaton, is intent on using the opportunity to escape, and of course to take down anyone that stands in his way. Said cop Andy Garcia must do everything in his power to stop him.Much of the film involves a tense stand-off inside a hospital and it's during this section that it starts to get silly. Garcia does things like assisting a criminal to escape and driving his stolen motorbike through glass doors yet at no time do any of the detectives or police force attempt to apprehend him, preferring to let him get on with it.The plot gradually breaks down and in the end becomes one long chase sequence, filled with all of the over-the-top stunts you'd expect from a '90s-era action movie. The ending is both schmaltzy and expected. While Keaton is good value for money, I always find the staid Garcia a bit of a bore and he's no exception here. Still, if you take it for what it is - and you have a soft spot for laughably OTT direction and nostalgia for the late '90s - then DESPERATE MEASURES does contain a few nuggets of merit along the way.

Here's an underrated suspense movie that's good. It's "good" in that fact it delivers what it promises: suspense. I'm sure there are a number of holes in this far-fetched tale but it's fun to watch nevertheless.Michael Keaton is almost mesmerizing in his role as the sick killer. There is some decent action in here, too, but suspense is the name of this game. Once you've started in, it's very difficult to put down. Andy Garcia and Marcia Gay Hayden turn in solid performances as well.It was nice to see a tough-but-loving father (Garcia) go to any lengths to save his kid. Speaking of the kid (Joseph Cross), they show this very little soft-spoken boy that is trying be saved and all of sudden he says the word "a-hole." What is the purpose of inserting that? Only in the world of film.

I really wanted to see this film - I thought the plot was really unique and intriguing. A cop (Andy Garcia) has a son who is dying and needs bone marrow replacement in order to live. The only match is a convicted serial killer, who escapes from jail. To save his son he has to track down the killer.Michael Keaton plays the convict in one of many disappointing aspects of the film. Keaton is a great actor at times but here he is pretty much boring. It's over-the-top to the point where you just stop caring.Garcia is better but tries too hard for a film that isn't up to par. Barbet Schroeder (at one time such a promising director with films like "Barfly" that amounted to pretty much nothing in the American market) directs well enough - I honestly thought the script was the culprit here...it's just a big mess.The film ultimately wastes a lot of good material, good actors and a good director - all because of a faulty script. What should have been a tense and thought-provoking film is just a Hollywood action dud.