Μύ 
After scooping an Oscar for "Training Day", in which he brilliantly subverted his good guy image by playing a murderously corrupt LA cop, you'd have thought Denzel Washington had moved on from playing paragons of virtue.
Alas, Nick Cassavetes' didactic new drama finds the actor typecast once again as a pillar of working-class decency whose only crime is to be insufficiently insured.
After his son (Smith) collapses while playing baseball, John Quincy Archibald (Washington) and his wife Denise (Elise) are shocked to discover he requires a heart transplant to survive. But John's insurance doesn't cover it, and nasty administrator Rebecca Payne (Heche) won't sanction the operation unless she has the cash up front.
Running into a wall of red tape, John Q takes the law into his own hands by hijacking the emergency room, complete with cardiologist Raymond Turner (Woods). His son requires a new ticker and he'll do anything to get it - even if it means donating his own heart to keep him alive.
Unfortunately, this overblown rehash of "Dog Day Afternoon" - in which Al Pacino held a bank hostage to raise funds for his lover's sex-change operation - doesn't so much need a heart as a brain transplant.
The woeful state of healthcare in the United States is a pressing concern (for Americans, anyway), but manufacturing such a patently absurd scenario is hardly the best way to address it.
What credibility there is comes from Washington's intense, humane performance and the supporting players' sterling attempts to rise above the stereotypical roles with which they have been saddled.
