Wonderful character development!

Great visuals, story delivers no surprises

What a freaking movie. So many twists and turns. Absolutely intense from start to finish.

There is just so much movie here. For some it may be too much. But in the same secretly sarcastic way most telemarketers say the phrase, the title of this one is particularly apt.

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 (1998): Dir: Barbet Schroeder / Cast: Michael Keaton, Andy Garcia, Joseph Cross, Marcia Gay Harden, Brian Cox: A desperate attempt to make a bad movie, which is essentially what this is. Film addresses how far a person will go to obtain, whether it be the cop who needs a bone transplant that only a criminal can provide or the criminal's escape to freedom but he is limited to the hospital. Shamelessly predictable with a cheap ending that plays like the final word of an argument. Barbet Schroeder often examines the dark side of human struggle but he achieved greater payoff with Single White Female to which the trauma issued is examined with two actresses who rise to the occasion. Michael Keaton as the criminal does the one logical thing and that is make an escape attempt but he will, of course, be won over by the kid and do the right thing before doing the wrong thing in the cheap ending. Andy Garcia as the paper thin cop who cares about his son and the success of this operation but tension rises when his kid is in potential danger. Joseph Cross plays Garcia's son who is more of a help to himself because he can sense Keaton's position. Marcia Gay Harden is reduced to being a damsel in distress that slows the movie down. Pointless, predictable and completely unoriginal in all aspects, the screenplay is in desperate need of a rewrite. Score: 2 / 10

I recorded this last night on Encore Suspense, and it really looked promising. Great cast, great director, stylish opening titles (that's becoming a lost art), and an interesting premise.Tonight I watched it. My jaw dropped, but for all the wrong reasons. In essence, Michael Keaton plays the Roadrunner, and Andy Garcia plays Wile E. Coyote. The big switch is that the coyote wants to catch the roadrunner because the coyote's son needs a bone marrow transplant and the roadrunner is a perfect match.Garcia's character is a police officer who very improbably arranges for Keaton to be released from prison so that the transplant can be done in a San Francisco hospital. Of course, complications ensue. Unfortunately, so does hilarity.It is admirable that Garcia's character, a widower, wants his child to survive. But after Keaton escapes he kills or injures dozens of police officers and hospital staff, but Garcia continually subverts attempts to capture or kill Keaton. As the Police Captain asks Garcia, "How many people are going to have to die here tonight so that kid of yours can live?"At first the film is entertaining. Keaton rightly realizes that the script is an improbable dud, so he has fun with it. But when he makes his big escape and slides down a laundry chute with a shock paddle in each hand to slow his fall it's clear that we've left the Earth's gravitational pull far behind us.It's good to see Keaton working. He's a fine actor who makes a lot of films, they just don't get released. But, good Lord, this was his next film after JACKIE BROWN. Is he that hard up for work?The much discussed in these pages ending, which I will not reveal, is predictable and even more unbelievable than anything else in the film. It's a perfect example of OK, smooth move, but what are you going to do now? What does NOT happen in the ending was that Garcia's son coming out from under sedation and speaking to his Dad in Keaton's voice. That's where the second star came from.Parents' note: Violence, profanity, gore, and an unforgivable scene in which a gun is aimed at a child's head.Trivia note: Later on Keaton starred in JACK FROST as a musician who neglects his family, dies, and comes back as a snowman. No, really, that's what happens. It's bad enough to count as a crime against humanity. The little boy who plays Garcia's son in DESPERATE MEASURES plays Keatons' son in JACK FROST.

michael keaton proved how good he is when he has the role of a bad guy, a criminal, a tough guy, when he starred in Pacific Heights. he's a very strong and believable character. i think that in this movie, he did better acting than andy garcia (but he was good too). i wish that michael keaton would do more bad-guy roles as well as something entirely different: a drama or comedy perhaps, so that he could expand the roles that he is good at doing. well, about this movie:i do not mind one iota that the F word is used so prolifically in Casino that it is like you hear it 100 times. it is the perfect word for the characters to use in THAT movie. but i dislike swearing used in dialogue just to get the audience charged up. it's like when violence or sex scenes do not seem to have a place: they are just used to keep us interested. but this movie, Desperate Measures, is just filled with the F word, and you notice it like a broken thumb because it doesn't belong in the sentences. in fact, the dialogue as a whole would have been more powerful without that word. therefore, although this movie is somewhat tense, i've seen tenser thrillers/crime movies that have no swearing whatsoever in them. is this sort of screenplay writing simply another indication of the decline of the once wealthy, respected, and powerful status of the USA? because, that is what it sounds like. the story in this movie is good. *** SPOILER: the plot is similar to John Q with denzel washington. *** END OF SPOILER.the actors are good. there are holes in the story, but the excitement gets you going so that you do not notice them until your hour after watching it, pondering over the plot. it is not that bad and it is not that good. i would not recommend your spending the amount of a theater ticket on this movie, but to watch it on cable, free of charge (with no other interesting movie to take up your time), is not ALL THAT BAD. it's a fair experience.