Lumet's 'Critical Care': ICU
And It's Not a Pretty Sight

Sidney Lumet plays both Devil's advocate and Dr. Kevorkian in "Critical Care," a darkly comic meditation on the quality of life, the right to die and a peek into the afterlife. It may be surprisingly larky material for the director of "Network," "The Verdict" and "Dog Day Afternoon," but it's no less conscientious or entertaining than his deeper, more caustic works.

And unlike most movies involving medical procedures, this one manages to make its point without making you throw up. Written by Steven Schwartz, the scenario isn't going to tax anybody's pacemaker, but it's spruce, funny and not without substance. And an unrecognizable Albert Brooks gooses up the lot with a gleefully demented turn as a doctor whose alcoholism has cost him his short-term memory, but not his position as head of a top American hospital's intensive-care unit.

Set mostly in this state-of-the-art facility, the story exposes the chronic corruption within the ailing health care industry. The prognosis, however, is as Capraesque as it is Lumetic. The tale's moody hero, Dr. Ernst (James Spader), even has a brush with his very own guardian angel (Anne Bancroft). And naturally when the time is right, he gives a big speech about doing the right thing worthy of Mr. Smith.

Ernst, a second-year resident specializing in critical care, is on the brink of a brilliant career when he is drawn into a feud over a fossil artificially sustained by a spaghetti of tubes and wires.

The primary opponents are the patient's daughters -- Felicia (Kyra Sedgwick) and Connie Potter (Margo Martindale) -- although a plague of lawyers, hospital administrators and insurance representatives quickly become part of the debate. Characterized by greed and cynicism, the proceedings come as an eye-opener for the self-absorbed Ernst.

The young physician has just discovered that the prefix "Dr." works as an aphrodisiac and has come to think of himself as a chick magnet. Felicia, who wants Pop unplugged, knows an easy target when she sees one. A few teardrops and a shed peignoir later, she seduces him into admitting that her corpse of a father will never regain consciousness.

The morning after, her lawyer subpoenaes Ernst to testify in her suit against her sister and the hospital, which is obligated to keep its patients alive as long as humanly possible or as long as the insurance pays the bills. Living wills aren't worth the paper they're written on; as the jaded Dr. Butz (Brooks) explains to Ernst, "Make sure you don't have insurance and you'll die in peace at home in your king-size bed."

Butz, Ernst's besotted mentor and supervisor, naturally allies with Connie, a dowdy born-again who claims her father's body spasms prove sentience. Of course, it's not the patient's welfare that interests him, or his homely daughter's wishes, but poor old Mr. Potter's catastrophic-care insurance and the financial gains it represents.

When it comes to the sick and dying, human kindness is in traction and increasingly soulless machines replace compassionate caretakers like Helen Mirren's sane, saintly nurse. Mirren's presence is ingratiating and warms up the antiseptic environs. Butz, however, is to "Critical Care" what Howard Beale was to Lumet's "Network": He's a messenger from the future and he's mad as hell.

Critical Care is rated R for vulgar language, sexual situations and adult themes.