By Robert Scucci
| Published 1 minute ago
Jailbreak movies like The Shawshank Redemption are great because you’re rooting for an innocent man to finally experience the freedom he deserves. 1998’s Desperate Measures makes you want to root for an actual bad guy because of how insane and stupid his escape plan is. Desperate Measures is a movie that lacks realism on every conceivable level, but you can’t help enjoying it because Michael Keaton is having such a blast playing an unhinged psychopath hellbent on breaking out of a supermax prison by using a very sick child as leverage.
Andy Garcia’s Frank Conner is, by all measures, a superdad trying to get his gravely ill son a life-saving bone marrow transplant. McCabe plans to exploit the child when informed he’s the only matching donor, and Conner is willing to let the entire world burn if it means his kid has a chance at living a normal life after his brutal fight with leukemia.
If you’re looking for an action thriller rooted in reality, Desperate Measures will probably disappoint you on every level. If you just want to watch a bunch of explosions as a father does everything in his power to save his son’s life, there’s a lot to enjoy here.
The Life Saving Escape Setup
Desperate Measures has a ridiculous setup, and it wisely gets it out of the way almost immediately so it can move on to even more ridiculous rising action and resolutions. We’re introduced to Detective Frank Conner (Andy Garcia), a widowed father racing against time to find a bone marrow donor for his leukemia-stricken son Matthew (Joseph Cross). As luck would have it, the only matching donor is Peter McCabe (Michael Keaton), a violent criminal locked away in Pelican Bay State Prison for multiple murders and kept under constant surveillance due to his long history of escape attempts.
Here’s everything else you need to know about Desperate Measures, summed up as efficiently as possible. Conner gets clearance to transport McCabe out of prison and into a hospital for the transplant. McCabe uses Conner’s desperation and his son’s condition to orchestrate a daring escape. Lots of things blow up. McCabe is such a magnetic villain that you almost want him to succeed. Then you remember a child will probably die if he does, so you swing back to rooting for Conner.
More things blow up, and by the time the third act rolls around, you have to suspend every ounce of disbelief you possess because Desperate Measures cares far more about spectacle than the actual story it’s telling.
An Exercise In Ridiculousness
Every single action thriller trope you can think of shows up in Desperate Measures. I lost count of how many times a gun is pointed at the bad guy while that same bad guy is pointing a gun at the only doctor capable of performing the transplant. Every time McCabe is cornered, the movie reminds us that if he dies, his bone marrow dies with him. Because McCabe is a sociopath with a 150 IQ, he’s always one step ahead and more than willing to cause maximum destruction while staying just out of reach of law enforcement.
Conner, whose only concern is saving his son’s life, is equally unhinged in his own way. He’s willing to risk everything, including his career and reputation, to see this nightmare through. The movie constantly escalates this push and pull until logic completely taps out.
Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop
If you turned Desperate Measures into a drinking game where you took a sip every time an action thriller trope appeared, you’d be non-verbal and slow dancing with a lamp before the second act was over. It’s absurd, but it’s also undeniably fun. You need to be willing to forgive how over-the-top it is to enjoy it. I’m not even going to touch what’s medically wrong with this movie, but I have serious doubts that Matthew Conner’s condition would be helped by any of this chaos. Applying a zero-hour countdown trope to a pre-teen with leukemia is such a wild creative choice that you almost have to respect it on sheer audacity alone.
Desperate Measures is explosive, melodramatic, and completely loses the plot by the time it hits its third act. Keaton’s performance alone is reason enough to stick with it, as he’s operating at maximum unhinged energy from start to finish. Don’t say you weren’t warned about how ridiculous this movie is, but if you’re in the mood for a nonstop thrill ride that fully embraces its own insanity, Desperate Measures delivers.
Desperate Measures is currently streaming for free on Tubi.