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Review of John Q.
John Q is an emotionally-packed movie that surrounds the unfortunate medical circumstances of John, played by Denzel Washington, and his son. The purpose of the film was to raise the many issues surrounding poor health care in the United States, and even less empathy from hospital administration and insurance companies. After John’s son collapses at a baseball game, the doctors diagnose him as having a heart that is too large for his body and declare that he must receive an immediate transplant to survive. Quickly, the hospital administration informs John that his insurance plan does not cover such an operation and an immediate payment of $100,000 must be made just to get his son’s name on the donor list.

The overall goal of the movie is to communicate the importance of health care reform and the problems surrounding the current health care system with employer-sponsored health insurance. Within the first half hour of the movie, the villain becomes clear: “it’s all the fault of a healthcare system that caters to the rich and well-insured middle classes while denying quality care — or even life itself — to the uninsured and to poor people” (Lockard). This villain becomes magnified through the events of the plot; whereby, the employer has changed John’s insurance plan without notification and the hospital administrators and doctors are unsympathetic towards the pleas of the family. Through the use of and excellently written screenplay, John Q is able to explain the goal of the movie. The audience is educated from the hospital administrator, played by Anne Heche, “that over forty million Americans do not have health insurance, and many more have inadequate insurance” that increases morbidity and mortality rates through insufficient health care (Lockard). Part of the goal of this movie has