REVIEW: ‘Extraordinary Measures’

Its plot line can be easily digested: parents fight to save their children from a debilitating disease, while battling pharmaceutical companies along with time. While “Extraordinary Measures” has all of the trappings of a TV “message” movie, its cast and writing elevate it into an affecting drama.

“Extraordinary Measures” Rated PG • 105 minutes Starring Brendan Fraser, Harrison Ford, Keri Russell Directed by: Tom Vaughan Written By: Getta Anand RCC Rating: Worth Seeing At A Matinee

“Measures” is based on the story of John Crowley, a drug company marketing manager and father of three. Two of his children have Pompe Disease, a rare neuromuscular disease that threatens to kill anyone with it before the age of 10. Desperate to find a cure, he reaches out to a researcher, Dr. Robert Stonehill (Harrison Ford), who has a groundbreaking theory on how to treat Pompe but no funding to produce the treatment. Crowley manages to raise the start-up funding for production of the drug, dragging the anti-social academician along for the ride. Crowley leverages everything he has – his job, his house, his credibility – to plead, cajole and bully a new drug into experimentation that might save the lives of his children.

What keeps “Extraordinary Measures” from careening into “movie-of-the-week” schmaltz is the quality of the cast, and its script.

Brendan Fraser has made a career of being the affable, grinning Everyman. His turn as Crowley is both surprising and refreshing. Every emotion of a parent struggling with keeping a child healthy splashes across his face, and the audience truly feels empathy for him and the plight of his kids. Harrison Ford also has a reputation as being the likable hero in his films, but Stonehill is anything but jovial. He delights in being the iconoclastic loner, and only reluctantly offers to work with Crowley. It’s a rare opportunity for Ford to portray an irascible bastard, and he does so without the audience hating him. It’s a great casting choice, and a great acting job.

Like most, I knew nothing about Pompe prior to the movie. Rather than the dry exposition scene where a doctor tells another character (and, by proxy, the audience) about what Pompe is and how it affects the musculature system of children, Geeta Anand’s screenplay doles out the information organically over the course of the movie’s first act. Touches like that elevate the film to a “better than its peers” status.

Make no mistake: director Tom Vaughan knows that he has to tug at the heartstrings of the audience at every opportunity, and does so. It’s a tearjerker on occasion, and had some cynical critics sobbing in spots at the press screening I attended last month. (See? We are human after all.) Vaughn manages to craft a movie that elicits emotion without becoming treacly and preachy.

“Extraordinary Measures” managed to beat my expectations. I went in thinking it would be a by-the-numbers Kleenex flick, but was surprised by the effectiveness of its cast and crew. It’s a movie with both heart and brass, and a good piece of storytelling.