Stacks its emotional deck in favour of the reluctant hero so high it threatens to collapse.
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02/15/02
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John Q (2002)
22
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:127
Fresh:28
Rotten:99
Average Rating:4.4/10
Consensus: Washington's performance rises above the material, but John Q pounds the audience over the head with its message.
Theatrical Release:Feb 15, 2002 Wide
Box Office: $71,026,631
Synopsis: John Q. Archibald (Denzel Washington) is struggling through a recession trying to provide for his son Mikey (Daniel E. Smith) and his waitress wife (Kimberly Elise). Mikey collapses at a Little... [More]
Starring: Denzel Washington, Robert Duvall, Anne Heche, James Woods
Director: Nick Cassavetes
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Reviews for John Q
Top Critic[Cassavetes and Kearns] stacked the deck so much that the movie becomes absurd.
02/15/02
A mess of a film that may send you to the doctor for one or more of the following: Inducing the gag reflex, causing wrist strain from checking your watch too many times, or prompting temporary blindness from far too much eye rolling.
02/15/02
It puts Washington, as honest working man John Q. Archibald, on a pedestal, then keeps lifting the pedestal higher.
02/15/02
Timidly dips its toe into important issues only to abandon them for cheap entertainment prancing around in faux sackcloth.
02/15/02
Top CriticThe film does tackle a nebulous, endemic social problem -- the unfairness of our healthcare system -- in an accessible, fairly entertaining manner.
02/15/02
A dissatisfying stew made of chunks of Dog Day Afternoon, Lorenzo's Oil and The King of Comedy.
02/15/02
Philosophically, intellectually and logistically a mess.
02/15/02
Top CriticNot a movie but a live-action agitprop cartoon so shameless and coarse, it's almost funny.
02/15/02
Top CriticIt looks much more like a cartoon in the end than The Simpsons ever has.
02/15/02
No doubt the star and everyone else involved had their hearts in the right place. Where their heads were is anyone's guess.
02/15/02
A poorly scripted, preachy fable that forgets about unfolding a coherent, believable story in its zeal to spread propaganda.
02/15/02
Top CriticA real audience-pleaser that will strike a chord with anyone who's ever waited in a doctor's office, emergency room, hospital bed or insurance company office.
02/15/02
The movie deteriorates into melodrama.
02/15/02
It's a powerful though flawed movie, guaranteed to put a lump in your throat while reaffirming Washington as possibly the best actor working in movies today.
02/15/02
Top CriticAs a disease-of-week telepic, this has all the clichés.
02/15/02
Like a tone-deaf singer at a benefit concert, John Q. is a bad movie appearing on behalf of a good cause.
02/15/02
As an argument for national health care, John Q. is embarrassingly one-sided; as a movie, it's just one-dimensional.
02/15/02
Top CriticIt features miserable direction by Nick Cassavetes, writing by James Kearns, and acting by too many to be named.
02/15/02
Top CriticThe extremely complex issue of health-care inequality gets reduced to a tale of vigilantism and manipulative heart tugging.
02/15/02
Latest News for John Q
November 27, 2008:
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February 22, 2006:
Cassavetes Working on Fact-Based "Bomb"
Filmmaker Nick Cassavetes will soon get to work on "Bombing Harvey," a fact-based tale of a Hungarian scientist who tried to plant a bomb in a Lake Tahoe casino in an... More...
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