Desperate Measures ** (1998, Michael Keaton, Andy Garcia, Brian Cox, Marcia Gay Harden) – Classic Movie Review 13,168

The shaky but tense and well handled 1998 American action thriller film Desperate Measures stars Michael Keaton, Andy García, Marcia Gay Harden and Brian Cox, and is directed by Barbet Schroeder.

Director Barbet Schroeder’s 1998 American action thriller film Desperate Measures is written by David Klass, and stars Michael Keaton, Andy Garcia, Brian Cox and Marcia Gay Harden.

Andy Garcia plays San Francisco cop Frank Conner, whose son has a potentially fatal bone-marrow disease and needs a DNA donor to survive. The only match is a convicted nasty multiple killer, Peter McCabe (Michael Keaton), so that’s all well and good. But, when McCabe escapes from the hospital, Conner must set out to catch him – alive and well!

This intelligent thriller is a bit shaky, contrived and unsurprising story-wise, but it is well handled by director Schroder. There are many good, tense sequences, and the undervalued Keaton and Garcia deliver the goods on the acting front.

It was filmed in the San Francisco Bay area and downtown Pittsburgh.

It was released on January 30, 1998.

It was an expensive financial failure for production companies TriStar Pictures and Mandalay Entertainment. On a budget of $50 million, it took only $13.8 million at the box office.

Cast: Michael Keaton as Peter J McCabe, Andy García as Detective Frank Conner, Brian Cox as Captain Jeremiah Cassidy, Marcia Gay Harden as Dr. Samantha Hawkins, Erik King as Detective Nate Oliver, Efrain Figueroa as Detective Vargas, Joseph Cross as Matthew Conner, Janel Moloney as Sarah Davis, Richard Riehle as Warden Ed Fayne, Peter Weireter as SWAT Team Commander, Steve Park as Dr Gosha, Donna Keegan as Donna, Dennis Cockrum as Head Pelican Bay Guard, Keith Diamond as Officer Derrick Wilson, John Meier as Officer Rains, Norman Howell as Officer Kellen, John Rottger as Officer Trimble, Tracey Walter as Medical Inmate, and Michael Shamus Wiles as Tough Inmate.

© Derek Winnert 2024 – Classic Movie Review 13,168

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