What to say about this movie? I loved how we get to meet his son and get to love him only to have the rug slipped from under the audience. Ann Heche is great as the cold insurance worker. The film has a lot of heart (No pun intended) and makes the audience feel just as desperate as John and his wife go through numerous measures, at one point selling their furniture to save their son. It also kind of makes you question the medical profession and if their diagnoses about the patients are always true. Denzel Washington is possibly the best thing in this movie. He is excellent as the misunderstood father who wants to help his son at any cost, he recently won an Oscar for best actor for his role in "Training Day", but with this movie under his belt it's safe to say that Denzel truly deserved his Oscar. I dare you to question this mans acting ability. I dare you. To Paraphrase a character in the movie, "How's it going to end?" I'm not telling you.

Oh boy, just because Denzel is at the helm in this lead role, it doesn't make this a good movie. This movie has a lot of heart, sure, but it doesn't have a good story to go with it. The movies story and pacing is so weak and slow, that at times it makes it hard to watch this. It has excellent plot devices yet never pulls through with them. For example, the entire hostage scene with Denzel in the hospital felt so rushed and artificial. I felt it could've gone for a good hour, yet only lasts for about a half-hour. Too bad. I didn't appreciate the producers adding Eddie Griffin as comic relief. I felt his role was so unnecessary.

I also would have liked to see Ray Liotta who plays the police chief and Robert Duvall, who plays a simple cop go at it more behind the scenes. Some tension would have made for great drama. Plus, the plot is so contrived that it's pretty much a remake of "Dog Day Afternoon". After a while, I didn't care much about the movie. The dialogue and situations are so far-fetched and so cornball that it felt like an after school special. Also, the ending completely derails the point of the plot that it's annoying, the last twenty minutes of the movie were so dull and uninteresting that I was disgusted. You figure a movie with actors like Ray Liotta, James Woods, Robert Duvall, Ann Heche, Denzel Washington would be a masterpiece, but they prove you wrong. Overall, a big build-up with a small bang.

A poorly scripted and plotted movie with sloppy plot holes, gigantic lapses in logic, a preachy message, and a terrible delivery. You can miss this one.

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