Extreme Measures

Extreme Measures (in Spain, When crossing the limit; in Latin America, Medidas extremas) is a 1996 thriller film based on the 1991 novel of the same name by Michael Palmer.

Plot

Guy Luthan (Hugh Grant) is an English doctor who works in a New York hospital. When the body of a man who died in his ER disappears, he asks questions that no one seems to like. Dr. Luthan continues with his inquiries and visits the eminent surgeon Lawrence Myrick (Gene Hackman). Then Luthan begins to realize that he is in serious danger, as there are some people willing to prevent him from learning the hospital's secrets anyway.

Someone plants cocaine in his house and the police arrest him, during the subsequent trial he loses his job, his medical license and his friends. Desperate, he manages to contact several homeless people who knew the man who died in the ER. Following this lead he discovers that Dr. Myrick is using vagrants for his medical experiments in search of a cure for quadriplegia.

Myrick tries to convince Guy to join his team by telling him that "test subjects" they are heroes and that their sacrifice is well worth it. Guy tells him that those people did not choose to be heroes and that makes Myrick a simple murderer. Myrick dies accidentally, the plot is discovered and the doctor's widow donates all her research documentation to Guy, telling him that her husband was trying to do something good by bad means and that has no justification.

Main cast

• Hugh Grant... Dr. Guy Luthan
• Gene Hackman... Dr. Lawrence Myrick
• Sarah Jessica Parker... Jodie Trammel
• David Morse... FBI agent Frank Hare
• Bill Nunn... Detective Bob Burke
• John Toles-Bey... Bobby.
• Paul Guilfoyle... Dr. Jeffrey Manko
• Debra Monk... Judith Gruszynski
• Shaun Austin-Olsen... Claude Minkins
• André De Shields... Teddy Dolson
• J. K. Simmons... Dr. Mingus
• Peter Appel... Detective Stone
• Diana Zimmer... Helen
• Nancy Beatty... Ruth Myrick