Extreme Measures

• Main
• All Subpages
• Create New

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.

---

Extreme Measures contains examples of:

• Anti-Villain: Myrick.
• Arc Words: Triphase
• British Accents: Well, Luthan is British.
• Designated Villain: Myrick.
• The Dragon: Agent Hare.
• Good Cop Bad Cop
• Harsher in Hindsight: Myrick is right, up to a certain point -- his main complaint is bureaucracy getting in the way of medical research and the leading researchers are not getting any younger. The movie was released back in 1996 and it wasn't till 2010 that scientists had success regrowing spines on mice.
• Hospital Hottie: Jodie Trammel, a nurse.
• I Did What I Had to Do: Arguably, everyone that works with Dr. Myrick. After all
• Just Think of the Potential: Myrick to Luthan
• Malicious Slander: Luthan gets falsely accused of drug charges after he's been snooping around.
• Manipulative Bastard: Myrick. Not really a bastard, but gets people to go along with his plans, with the hopes their love ones will reap the benefits of his research, regardless of how unethical it is.
• Mohs Scale of Sci Fi Hardness: Recent breakthroughs have managed to regenerate spinal cord nerves in mice. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-10895816
• The Mole: Trammel
• Morally-Ambiguous Doctorate: It's not that he want's to be evil, but he's getting on his years and really wants work on his research, for the benefit of humankind.
• Motive Rant:

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.

• My God, What Have I Done?: Hare accidentally killing Myrick.
• The Needs of the Many: Myrick's motivation -- or excuse.
• Passing the Torch: Myrick's wife hands all the research data to Luthan at the end.
• Science Marches On: Albeit too slowly. See Mohs Scale of Sci Fi Hardness and Harsher in Hindsight.
• Shut UP, Hannibal:

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.

• The Social Darwinist: Myrick.
• Utopia Justifies the Means: Played with. It's not like he's trying to take over the world, he just doesn't want to be bound by pesky human experimentation protocols.
• What a Senseless Waste of Human Life: Basically why Myrick decided to skip heaps of medical protocol and go straight to human experimentation by using homeless people as guinea pigs.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Well, he admitted so.

---