John Q

A 2002 film starring Denzel Washington as John Q. Archibald, a father whose son has just fallen victim to a terrible heart condition, which requires a transplant within a fairly short amount of time. Unfortunately for John, he soon finds out that due to his company's change in health coverage, his HMO will not allow compensation for the procedure. After expending all his other options in attempts to find financing for his son's operation, John makes a desperate choice by holding a hospital emergency room hostage until he is guaranteed an operation for his son. The film also stars Robert Duvall as Lt. Frank Grimes, Anne Heche as Rebecca Payne, and James Woods as Dr. Raymond Turner.

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This film shows examples of:

• Air Vent Passageway: Used to get into the emergency room.
• And This Is For: — Has one scene involving a guy attempting to take down John Q while his girlfriend instead, mace sprays 'him' and not John Q, in addition to kicking him down, even in the groin.
• Author Tract/Anvilicious: The film is an extended parable against the American health industry, and is very heavy-handed in getting its message across. Whether this particular anvil needed to be dropped, of course, is entirely up to the viewer.
• Bad Cop, Incompetent Cop: They sent a sniper to kill a guy talking with his family on the phone. While he had no hostage under weapon aim. I mean, would it be to costly to give a non-fatal shot?! And they degrade to the point of telling him that his feelings for his son's death is meaningless.
• Billy Needs an Organ: The central conflict of the film
• Chekhov's Gunman: The woman who dies in the opening scene.
• Domestic Abuse: One of the kidnapped patients is a mean drunk...
• Double Meaning Title: The title John Q. refers both to the main character's name and the term "John Q. Public", which is a symbol for the common man.
• Fox News Liberal: It's not hard to tell what side of the health-care debate these writers came out on the side of
• Good Doc Bad Doc: The kidnapped doctors and nurses get into it during a debate over HMO coverage
• Hostage Situation: A rare case where the audience is actually rooting for the kidnapper. Or is supposed to
  • Hell, even the hostages were rooting for him(most of them, anyway).
• Justified Criminal: John only creates the Hostage Situation out of despiration for his son's life
• Karma Houdini: The police guys who tried killing John disnecessarely because it was Election Year. Almost happened with Payne, but the guilt stab to her heart may or may have not been sufficient.
  • John himself, fue to all the blatant Protagonist-Centered Morality.
• Mistaken Identity: Towards the end of the film, one of the hostages pretends to be John by dressing in his coat and hat, in order to give John a chance to watch his son's operation
• Moral Dilemma: John seems to be going through a series of these during the entire Hostage Situation
• Police Are Useless: Well, at least the Chief of Police and those how listen to him
• Protagonist-Centered Morality: The protagonist's son needs a heart transplant but can't afford it. Clearly, the big bad insurance agent is evil for not paying for his son's surgery. So John Quincy Archibald holds an entire hospital emergency room hostage, threatens to kill people if his son doesn't get a heart, and causes terror. However, there are only so many hearts available for transplant in the world. By blackmailing others to get his son a heart, he stole it from someone else, effectively killing that person. Then his son had the heart transplanted last minute by a group unprepared for the surgery, which lowered the odds of the transplant working. So John gave HIS OWN SON a lower chance of success of surviving the surgery from the person he stole the heart from. Not to mention the whole holding people hostage, disrupting an emergency room, which nearly resulted in one person dying, due to lack of proper treatment. Not only did John's stunt waste thousands of dollars, his 'victory' will encourage more people to blackmail the government for organs, which will further destabilize things, and most likely lead to more senseless deaths when the next blackmail attempt doesn't go as well as John's. Meanwhile, the insurance agent and doctor that are presented as the bad guys point out that they can't go around helping every person when there aren't enough hearts to go around. When one has to triage lives anyways, to triage lives based off financial affordability makes sense when the only other option is going bankrupt from never being payed for such services, and no one getting help.
  • The news media montage shown near the end basically states that John's actions does nothing to fix the medicare problem, and that he was extremely lucky things worked out. Despite that, John's eventual arrest shows that he doesn't get off scot free... for a short while, as he's released few months later. So basically, John indirectly killed an innocent person, near killed someone else, put many innocent lives in risk including that of the son he was supposedly willing to save, encouraged people in similarly desperate situations to pull similar stunts to "fuck the system"... and ultimately got away with it. And yet the audience is supposed to doubtlessly support him.
• Shout-Out: To bodybuilding. John's son is a big fan and references several past time legends in the sport. There are even pictures hung all over his room.
• Spiritual Successor: A Race Lift remake of Dog Day Afternoon, right down to the the awesome "Attica!! Attica!!" scene where John turns an angry public against the police.

[This hospital is under new management! FREE HEALTH-CARE FOR EVERYBODY!! "

• Sympathetic Criminal
• X Meets Y: Dog Day Afternoon in a hospital.