Extreme Measures

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Extreme Measures is a 1996 thriller film based on Michael Palmer's 1991 novel of the same name, about the ethics of how far we are willing to go, and how much we are willing to sacrifice, in order to cure the world's ills.

Hugh Grant plays Guy Luthan, a British doctor working at a hospital in New York who starts making unwanted inquiries when the body of a man who died in his emergency room disappears. The trail leads Luthan to the door of the eminent surgeon Dr Lawrence Myrick (Gene Hackman), but Luthan soon finds himself in danger from people who want the hospital's secret to remain undiscovered.

The film also features Sarah Jessica Parker as Jodie Trammel, nurse and trusted colleague of Guy.


Tropes used in Extreme Measures include:


Myrick: People die every day. And for what? For nothing. What do we do? What do *you* do? You take care of the ones you think you can save. Good doctors do the correct thing. Great doctors have the guts to do the right thing. Your father had those guts.

Luthan: Those men upstairs, maybe there isn't much point to their lives. Maybe they are doing a great thing for the world. Maybe they are heroes. But they didn't choose to be. You chose for them. You didn't choose your wife or your granddaughter, you didn't ask for volunteers. You chose for them. And you can't do that, because you're a doctor, and you took an oath, and you're not God. So I don't care, I don't care if you can do what you say you can. I don't care if you find a cure for every disease on the planet! You tortured and murdered those men upstairs, and that makes you a disgrace to your profession! And I hope you go to jail for the rest of your life.