John Q

By PETER CALDER

(Herald rating: * * )

There's a serious film in here trying to get out but it's drowned out by the noise and fury of a siege drama in the mould of Dog Day Afternoon but with none of the wit and little of the drama.

Washington plays working stiff John Archibald (his middle name is Quincy; he adopts the name John Q when the action hots up), struggling to support his wife and young son. When the latter collapses during a baseball game and doctors reveal his enlarged heart will kill him unless he gets a transplant, the Archibalds tremulously give the go-ahead. But they are stunned to find their health insurance, reduced by an employer who has been laying staff off, has a maximum well below the $250,000 cost.

The steps John Q takes once he's exhausted all other options are well-signalled by the trailer - a much more impressive work than the completed film - so it does no harm to hint at them here. Suffice to say the story involves a lot of cops, including a veteran hostage negotiator (Duvall winces and bumbles) and a gladhanding, politically motivated police chief (Liotta, a leering, pasty cliche).

John holes up with a selection of stereotypes from central casting - an obese security guard, a battered woman and her stroppy bloke and a righteous brother as well as the coldly patrician cardiac surgeon who has recommended that the ailing, indigent boy be discharged. Meanwhile, outside, the hospital's hard-hearted CEO (Heche) has a change of heart, the most egregious of the film's many implausibilities.

Debutant screenwriter James Kearns and director Nick (son of John) Cassavetes, who wrote Blow, paint in broad strokes; the bad guys are too bad to believe, the good guys are confused. The usually reliable Washington does his best - a long and tearful speech to his semi-conscious boy is the only authentic moment - but mostly it falls flat. Attempts at the end to highlight the currency of the story about a crisis in access to health care serve only to underline the whole enterprise's failure of imagination.

Cast: Denzel Washington, Robert Duvall, James Woods, Ray Liotta, Anne Heche

Director: Nick Cassavetes

Running time: 118 minutes

Rating: M (contains violence)

Screening: Village Hoyts cinemas