John Q

John Quincy Archibald is a father and husband whose son is diagnosed with an enlarged heart and then finds out he cannot receive a transplant because HMO insurance will not cover it. Therefore, he decides to take a hospital full of patients hostage until the hospital puts his son's name on the donor's list.

Critics largely dismissed John Q as heavy-handed agitprop that mistakes volume for conviction, though audiences responded with genuine warmth — a gap that tells you almost everything about the film. Denzel Washington's performance was widely acknowledged as the one thing that rises above the material, even as reviewers felt the film's healthcare-system message was delivered with a sledgehammer rather than a scalpel.