Critical Care (1997)

IMDb plot summary: A hospital resident is put in the middle of a legal battle between two half-sisters on whether to pull their comatose dad's life support. But more seems to be at stake than dad's life - his inheritance.

Directed by Sidney Lumet. Starring James Spader, Kyra Sedgwick, and Helen Mirren.

Critical Care is a Sidney Lumet movie starring James Spader as a young resident in a hospital's critical care unit. He gets caught in the middle of an inheritance dispute between two half-sisters where the outcome depends on the death of the father, who is in a coma and being kept alive artificially. The choice of color here is distinctive but very strange. Sequences in the hospital often appear to be happening in some sort of eerie white void, which give them a quality that bounces between otherworldly and "we couldn't afford to make our set look realistic." It definitely is deliberate though, as it occasionally changes the all-white walls to an entirely different color palate to convey a patient's emotional state. It doesn't always work, but it's easily the most compelling thing about this movie. While Lumet tells a lot of stories about systemic corruption, this film reminded me most of Network and Power, in which the key to taking down corrupt systems is mostly for individuals to care enough. While that lands in Network, it feels a little empty in this one and feels a little too much like a cheesy made-for-TV movie, along with some melodramatic acting (that maybe is being played for comedy?) and the unusual choice of set design.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Critical Care < Deconstructing Harry

Critical Care > Asterix and Cleopatra

Critical Care > Firecreek

Critical Care > Jimmy the Kid

Critical Care > The Madness of King George

Critical Care < Spider-Man: Homecoming

Critical Care < Kate

Critical Care > The Baby-Sitters Club

Critical Care > King Richard

Critical Care < The Dinner Guest

Critical Care < 12 Monkeys

Critical Care > All the Money in the World

Final spot: #1893 out of 3605, or 47%.