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I was looking for something to read during the flights to and from CinemaCon, and I happened to hit upon "Coma," the book, which I read a long time ago and liked. After finishing it last night, I decided to watch the movie, which has always been one of my favorite thrillers.
This is one of those occasions where the movie is better, to me, than the book. The book is very wordy, with a ton of medical terminology in it (the author, Robin Cook, is a doctor), and the ending "action" segments near the end seem better suited to the big screen than to the printed page. The movie is a genuine creepfest, making your skin crawl in all the best ways. Don't get me wrong, the book is really good, but in this case I just like the movie better. It's directed by Michael Chrichton, who gave us "Jurassic Park," so it's got thriller cred.
For anyone who hasn't seen it, it holds up quite well. The story is about a young female doctor who discovers an unually high amount of "ordinary" surgery cases that end up with the patient coming out in a coma. Investigating, she winds up running afoul of the hospital's all-male senior staff, especially the chief anasthesiologist, who don't like her snooping around and suggesting they are "overlooking something." Eventually her investigation leads her to put her own life in danger as she discovers that (as the book puts it) something is very, very wrong.
The movie is very well written, taking just enough of the medical-talk from the book to make it all feel real and give us plenty of information to understand what's going on. Several expository scenes explain what happens to a person during surgery, and it really gives a great "behind-the-scenes" look inside a hospital, with a lot of bits that you'd never normally see, such as a pathologist casually eating a hamburger while watching an autopsy. There are a number of plot holes that you need to overlook, as is typical with this kind of movie, but if you don't think about it too much, they're not too bothersome.
One thing that's kind of cool is, the movie has absolutely no musical score for the first 45 minutes. You don't really notice that it's missing until it suddenly shows up very effectively.
The cast is first-rate. Genevieve Bujold plays the young doctor, opposite an equally young Michael Douglas. Elizabeth Ashley, Rip Torn and Richard Widmark all play their characters to the hilt, and as with all good mystery thrillers, you never really know who's "in on it" and who's not, until the last few minutes, and you're left with a very unsettling feeling of "holy shit, this could actually happen."
This is one of those movies that could stand a good remake, but considering I've hardly ever seen a modern remake of anything that topped the original, I kind of hope that doesn't happen. I moticed that A&E aired a two-part version of it a few years ago, which is available on DVD; but I looked up the plot on Wikipedia and found that they really dumbed-up the story. So, that's a hard pass.
This is one of those occasions where the movie is better, to me, than the book. The book is very wordy, with a ton of medical terminology in it (the author, Robin Cook, is a doctor), and the ending "action" segments near the end seem better suited to the big screen than to the printed page. The movie is a genuine creepfest, making your skin crawl in all the best ways. Don't get me wrong, the book is really good, but in this case I just like the movie better. It's directed by Michael Chrichton, who gave us "Jurassic Park," so it's got thriller cred.
For anyone who hasn't seen it, it holds up quite well. The story is about a young female doctor who discovers an unually high amount of "ordinary" surgery cases that end up with the patient coming out in a coma. Investigating, she winds up running afoul of the hospital's all-male senior staff, especially the chief anasthesiologist, who don't like her snooping around and suggesting they are "overlooking something." Eventually her investigation leads her to put her own life in danger as she discovers that (as the book puts it) something is very, very wrong.
The movie is very well written, taking just enough of the medical-talk from the book to make it all feel real and give us plenty of information to understand what's going on. Several expository scenes explain what happens to a person during surgery, and it really gives a great "behind-the-scenes" look inside a hospital, with a lot of bits that you'd never normally see, such as a pathologist casually eating a hamburger while watching an autopsy. There are a number of plot holes that you need to overlook, as is typical with this kind of movie, but if you don't think about it too much, they're not too bothersome.
One thing that's kind of cool is, the movie has absolutely no musical score for the first 45 minutes. You don't really notice that it's missing until it suddenly shows up very effectively.
The cast is first-rate. Genevieve Bujold plays the young doctor, opposite an equally young Michael Douglas. Elizabeth Ashley, Rip Torn and Richard Widmark all play their characters to the hilt, and as with all good mystery thrillers, you never really know who's "in on it" and who's not, until the last few minutes, and you're left with a very unsettling feeling of "holy shit, this could actually happen."
This is one of those movies that could stand a good remake, but considering I've hardly ever seen a modern remake of anything that topped the original, I kind of hope that doesn't happen. I moticed that A&E aired a two-part version of it a few years ago, which is available on DVD; but I looked up the plot on Wikipedia and found that they really dumbed-up the story. So, that's a hard pass.
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