Extreme Measures Review

I’m not a big fan of romantic comedies, I just am not fit to watch a lot of those cheesy films where the boy meets the girl and the two fall in some sort of weird love and hooray, all is well with the world. However, that’s how the world was first introduced to one of the stars of today’s review, and his name is none other than Hugh Grant. The guy has been the main character in more romantic comedies than most other performers at this point in their career, but people also forget that before he was relegated to romantic comedy, he did dabble in a bit of horror. This thriller/scary movie was made in 1996 and based on a novel and it isn’t as bad as you might think. Today we will try to talk about Extreme Measures, the mid 90s classic.

The story’s main element relies heavily on the premise of a doctor conducting extreme experiments on homeless people that are going to die in the hospital. Instead of having them parish, a rogue doctor uses them to figure out how to cure certain diseases that affect the spine. So far, he hasn’t been able to succeed and much of his experiments have been proven disastrous. When Hugh Grant’s character gets a hold of what’s going on he wants it to stop, but you know that can’t happen, right?

Gene Hackman plays the rogue doctor and he has slipped by getting caught several times, and tries to convince the new doctor that what he is doing is finding a cure for paralysis, which would change the course of the future. When a rogue FBI agent gets involved, the two doctors fight for what they believe all the way into the last sequence in which the movie turns from horror/thriller into police drama.

Extreme Measures takes a horror premise, like that of Frankenstein and then turns it into a morality play more than anything else. Hugh Grant shows his range and Hackman is dead on with his stance on the matter of finding a cure at all costs. There are some sick and gorey moments in this film, with a taste of horror overall but you never truly feel like Hackman’s character is going to win out. The movie is fast paced and has more thrill than scare, but still fits firmly amidst the scary movie genre. If you want to scare yourself, just think about “what if”, and you’ll start to realize that these things could and are happening right under your nose.