In the hands of physician-turned-author Robin Cook and author/director Michael Critchton, the original “Coma,” was very scary, smart and thought-provoking.
In the hands of action movie makers, Ridley and the late Tony Scott, A&E’s remake of “Coma,” is very lame, dopey and the only thought it will provoke is: “Why?”
The novel, which became a hit movie, centered on young doctor Susan Wheeler, who, after her friend falls into a coma during routine surgery, discovers that the hospital has an incredibly high rate of such “accidents” among young, healthy patients.
Clearly more than bad medicine is afoot — and Wheeler is thrown into the horrifying world of organ harvesting for science and profit.
In this two-night miniseries, Wheeler is played by Lauren Ambrose, late of “Six Feet Under” (no pun intended) whose acting skills span the gamut from eye squinting to lip scrunching to head tilting.
Ambrose’s character is joined in love and adventure by Dr. Mark Bellows (Steven Pasquale), who is, we’re supposed to believe, very ethical even though he’s tapping hospital honcho Dr. Agnetta Lindquist (Geena Davis) to advance his career.
James Woods plays the supposedly “feared” Dr. Stark, who seems interested only in practicing good medicine.
Richard Dreyfus is a professor of ethics (I think) and Ellen Burstyn plays the evil head of the equally evil Jefferson Institute, where the hundreds and hundreds of coma patients are kept (in silver second-skin suits while suspended on rods).
The original movie kept you on the very edge of your seat, never knowing who is a good guy and who isn’t. It also made you ponder the ethics of medical research at any cost to cure illness.
Here, however, you are left to ponder how in hell a third-year medical student on her first day in the hospital is allowed to completely ignore rounds to tend to patients — and how this same young woman can climb through hospital ceilings unnoticed on her second or third day as she single-handedly tracks all the lines leading into the OR until she discovers a tampered gas line.
The absurdity of too many scenes like that, plus the fact the mystery is pretty much laid out like a coma patient from the beginning. ruins whatever suspense you might otherwise have built up.
Because it’s Ridley Scott, there are car crashes— although shockingly, no one blows out from an exploding building, which must be the first time in two decades that this particular special effect wasn’t employed.
Ambrose is terrible in the part, while Pasquale is more pretty set decoration than believable ally.
Burstyn, who starred in the scariest movie ever made, “The Exorcist” is reduced here to being lit from below to look like the scary lady, while Dreyfus and Woods are wasted in thankless roles.
If the original was in the tradition of Hitchcock, this one is very much in the tradition of Ridley. The silver skin suits are pretty cool, though.