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Thanks for the memories!

Such a frustrating disappointment

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Blistering performances.

I didn't make it all the way through this movie, and that's a shame. The main issue "Article 99" attempts to address is an important one, one close to my heart because of several veteran relatives & friends. It shines an accusatory light on the sub-par (at best)treatment provided the men & women who served our country. Almost every single face we see in just the first 30 minutes belongs to an actor/actress who has garnered accolades in television (especially) or film. Kiefer Sutherland, Forest Whitaker, Eli Wallach... even the guy who plays "Frank" on "ER" (Troy Evans). Over the years I've enjoyed almost every single actor/actress in this movie. It's depressing to watch them all be crushed to death under the crappy dialog and undecided direction of "Article 99".This movie tries to blend the seriously horrid state of care in VA hospitals with the chummy banter of their long-suffering, comrade-in-arms doctors and nurses. It does an abysmal job of it. The schlocky repartee detracts mightily from the issues it attempts to address. This is one of those movies you watch hoping it'll get better and puzzling over why things went so horribly wrong.

This film was made in 1992 but i only heard about it when i saw that it was on FX channel last night (22 Feb 2005). Ray Liotta was a goody which i'd never seen before, and he was great. The story is about low paid doctors trying their best to provide war veterans a complete medical service of treatment (including psychiatric) and operations. The hospital is overcrowded, understaffed,underfunded and under-supplied of medical provisions. The film takes us through the trials and tribulations of the underhanded tricks they pull to get provisions and perform operations on the needy Vets. The uncaring chief Administrator, wants the hospital run by the book, which does not include certain types of treatment and operations. Indeed, it seems like he doesn't think there should be patients in his hospital at all! - so of course, they have the expected run-ins with him. Plenty of famous faces as patients, a little bit of romance, humour in the right places and an exciting climax, complete this great drama - well worth watching. I'll be getting the video i think!

Article 99 is a biting backlash against the absurd beauractic red tape preventing Veteran's hospital from dispensing much needed care to mounting numbers of patients. Faced with the endless parade of lost files and missing certification statements, hiding patients, and stealing medicine, these noble doctors do whatever it takes, defying a stubborn administrator and risking the vitality of their medical careers. Good performances by all, particularly among Keifer Sutherland as the new doctor who is steadily learning the difficulties and trade-offs of working in a system so inexplicably and ineffectively bound by the system, experiencing this in his exchanges with an elderly patient named Sam (Eli Wallach). It is disgusting to see Sam, heralded a war hero and honored with a Silver Star, to be labeled a Gomer (patients who hang around the hospital on some unknown floor waiting to be approved for their respective treatments), only to die because the adminstrator restricted the funding so much that they couldn't perform the tests on him, leaving him to slowly die and the young doctor to scramble desperately to save his life, not being able to do much to help him, his hands tied by the system. Keith David is excellent, too, here in another war-themed movie with John McGinnis, having previously co-starred together in 'Platoon.' David is "Luther," a disabled vet who acts as the source of reality, I suppose, of how the hospital operates, but is also a 'guardian angel' type as he protects the doctors who just want to take care of their damn patients. Luther, as evident in the finale, stages his own sort of war, one against the government when the hospital goes into lockdown, and it is not one he is willing to give up. Once fighting for his government, now his fighting against them. David also adds some good humor to the story, a bit of comic relief to this gloomy drama. Eli Wallach provides some of the same.Ray Liotta, Kathy Baker, and John Mahoney likewise give good performances and it is the cast that really make this movie as good it is, propelled by an important story.

Set in a VA hospital, this movie illustrates what happens when "red tape" gets in the way of helping people. An enjoyable mixture of comedy and drama, it is reminiscent of the Altman classic M*A*S*H, staring Sutherland's father Donald. In fact, there's a nice salute to the elder Sutherland, during a scene between Keifer and an older hospital patient.Those who didn't "get" this movie were perhaps looking for the wrong things. I won't say this movie was meant to inform, though perhaps it was. But it definitely makes you think. Is a medical system where doctors have to steal supplies and schedule proxy operations really what our country's heroes deserve? Moving and entertaining, I would definitely recommend this movie.