This Denzel Washington Thriller Is So Good It Should've Been the One to Get Him His First Leading Man Oscar

In short, John Q. centers around a man named John (Washington) whose nine-year-old son is in need of a heart transplant. John and his wife (Kimberly Elise) only have $1,000 saved, which is much less than the $75,000 deposit required for the surgery. As for insurance potentially covering the surgery? Well, that is out of the question as John gets told rather abruptly that his job changed insurance carriers a while back, and that the procedure doesn’t qualify due to his reduced work hours. Upon exhausting all other options for getting the $75,000, John decides he is going to take matters into his own hands by holding the hospital staff hostage, and it only gets more intense from there.

Throughout the film, there are a number of wild reveals. *Mini-spoiler alert here*: One of the things John discovers is that his son’s condition could have been detected sooner (before reaching the point of a dire situation), but that his son’s doctor had purposely not given the family the option of doing additional testing to get bonuses from the insurance company. Oh boy…now John is really mad.

Not only did Washington fail to receive an Academy Award for his performance, he didn’t even get nominated, which grinds my unofficial movie critic gears. And while I do love Training Day, I believe it’s the reason for the poor critic reviews and lack of nominations. I think had this film had come out first (it was shot in 2000 and was released only a few months after), the Academy would have seen the true depth of Washington’s performance. In Training Day, Washington is the bad guy. In John Q., he is the “bad guy” who is really a good guy that you sympathize with and end up rooting for. Even though his actions are wrong, you understand…and I think that is a more Academy Award-worthy performance. Sadly, it got lost in the mix because of all the hype surrounding his nomination for the 2002 ceremony, which at the time was only one month away. I blame you, Training Day.

Ray Liotta sure is missed, and this film is just another example of his great body of work. In John Q., Liotta’s character, Chief Gus Monroe, offers no real compromise or guidance, and lacks any sort of sympathy towards John and his child. He also gets into it with police negotiator Lt. Frank Grimes, as he disagrees with putting John’s family on the waiting list as a potential solution. His performance is, in short, quite good.