John Q: Critic Reviews

Cassavetes thinks he's making Dog Day Afternoon with a cause, but all he's done is to reduce everything he touches to a shrill, didactic cartoon.

Represents a creative dead end for the organ-transplant movie.

It pulls out more stops than that old silent serial The Perils of Pauline. Unfortunately, it's a talkie.

A polemic in search of a plot.

A sappy, melodramatic Denzel Washington vehicle that ensnares you in the standard hostage-movie scenario and doesn't let go until the director runs the whole playbook.

Manipulative sentimentality, contrived plot and phony climax.

Thought-provoking. Too intense for young teens.

Strands good actors in mushy, movie-of-the-week material. [Blu-ray]

The movie comes dangerously close to saying that the solution to a personal grievance is, well, terrorism, when you get right down to it.

Social messages, simplistic action, and teary melodrama are manipulatively but unsuccessfully mixed in this picture, which tries to provide a "hard" look at an honest working-class man (Washington) who loses control while trying to save his child's life

Instead of presenting the story and allowing us to draw our own conclusions, Cassavetes blatantly tells us what we should think.

Washington, Woods, and Duvall are so capable, they almost save this schlock-fest from itself.

A coercive script by James Kearns, and some middling direction by Nick Cassavetes, can't rob the movie of an undeniable, headlong crowd-pleasing power as it tackles an issue that touches us all.

An emotional, heart-wrenching story that not only takes viewers on a journey within their own souls, but also opens up their eyes to the way the health care system works.

It may push more buttons than envelopes but John Q is a good old fashioned potboiler that generates ripped from the headlines heat.

"Socially conscious" Denzel Washington thriller wants to tackle tough questions -- but settles for easy answers.

'John Q" is a manipulative thriller, but unlike most such films, it has a worthwhile social policy point to make and some top-notch acting talent to help put the point across.

Beats us over the head and then expects us not to notice its cheap tricks.

It can be described as manipulative, derivative and heavy-handed. In spite of all that, it kinda works in a populist-fantasy sort of way.

While it scarcely touches on the inadequate American health care system, it's at least got something to say, rather than just gush.

John Q's agitprop requires audiences who think art is worthy if it affirms their moral beliefs.

At times, John Q. plays like Dog Day Afternoon crossed with a human resources seminar.

Denzel is great, the movie is not.

...stumbles over every cheap trick in the book trying to make the outrage come even easier.

wastes the considerable gifts of Oscar winners Denzel Washington and Robert Duvall on a screenplay that takes serious issues and turns them into an outlandish get-even fantasy.