Critical Care (1997)

An overworked intern (James Spader) thinks with his penis rather than his head when he is seduced by the daughter (Kyra Sedgwick) of a comatose patient. Soon, he finds himself caught in a lawsuit between her and her older sister (Margo Martindale) over keeping the patient alive and his medical career is on the line. Based on the novel by Richard Dooling and directed by Sidney Lumet. Lumet directed NETWORK and it's no coincidence that the movie tries to do with the medical system what it did to television in NETWORK. Fortunately, the film isn't as strident as NETWORK since Paddy Chayefsky didn't write this but Lumet's direction is still heavy handed. A film on the corruption of the medical system as it becomes more concerned with making substantial profits than helping the sick would be most welcome. Alas, this isn't it. The film's "satire" attempts to be biting but it just ends up hitting you over the head. We have fantasy sequences with Wallace Shawn as Satan and Anne Bancroft as an angel and worst of all, a 40ish Albert Brooks playing a senile old geezer (what they couldn't have hired a 70-ish actor?). A huge misfire. With Helen Mirren, Jeffrey Wright, Edward Herrmann, Philip Bosco and Colm Feore.