There are echoes of the Robin Cook/Michael Crichton collaboration "Coma" (1978) all over "Extreme Measures," which goes where too many medical thrillers have gone before.
In the assured hands of director Michael Apted ("Coal Miner's Daughter," "Gorillas in the Mist"), this overheated yarn does serve up some exciting moments, but they aren't enough to get past the huge implausibilities and gaping plot holes.
Still, if you keep your expectations low, you may have some fun.
Eschewing his nervous comic persona, Hugh Grant is surprisingly effective as Dr. Guy Luthan, a confident, idealistic young physician who is working in the emergency room of a Manhattan hos-pital. He's on his way to bigger things as a hot-shot neurologist when he suddenly finds himself waylaid by a mystery.
A naked, middle-aged man, thought to be a drug-user suffering from exposure, is brought into the emergency room. But when he suddenly goes into convulsions and then just as suddenly calms down, it becomes apparent that something else is afoot. During the momentary respite, the man awakens and offers some incongruous information to Grant, something about "the room" and a man named "Teddy Dolson." Then he goes into convulsions again and dies.
While everyone else is content to write off the incident, Guy can't let it go. A post-mortem might help, but wouldn't you know it - the body disappears.
Naturally, the further Guy digs into the mystery, the more his superiors seem to be cut him off until he is ultimately framed for a crime and kicked out of medicine.
But this just gives him more time to play detective.
Though the mystery isn't clearly defined until late in the film, it's quickly apparent that a nationally respected neurologist, Dr. Lawrence Myrick (Gene Hackman), is the chief bad guy, and that homeless men are being used as human guinea pigs for some kind of medical experiments.
This is a plot device that has been used before, but it's handled pretty well - at least, until the film's deep-seated paranoia kicks in. The worst subplot has a pair of law-enforcement officials (David Morse and Bill Nunn) being blackmailed into abusing the privileges of their badges. Morse's character is ridiculously over the top, an FBI agent who apparently relishes acting as a paid bodyguard/assassin.
The film reaches some sort of silliness zenith in its final scenes, as the hero and the villain confront each other, each delivering a windy speech to justify his view.
But Apted does give us a few genuinely thrilling sequences, including a chilling tour of an underground society and a tense fight in an elevator. And as mentioned, Grant is surprisingly good in his role, quite natural and effectively paranoid.
Unfortunately, none of the other characters is as well defined, although Hackman tries valiantly to put some nuance into his role. But a brunette Sarah Jessica Parker is unable to do much with her role as a sympathetic nurse.
The cinematography lends an oddly pallid, colorless edge to the proceedings, and Danny Elfman's music isn't particularly distinguished.
"Extreme Measures" is rated R for violence, hospital gore, and a surprising amount of profanity.