Article 99 is a biting backlash against the absurd beauractic red tape preventing Veteran's hospital from dispensing much needed care to mounting numbers of patients. Faced with the endless parade of lost files and missing certification statements, hiding patients, and stealing medicine, these noble doctors do whatever it takes, defying a stubborn administrator and risking the vitality of their medical careers.
Good performances by all, particularly among Keifer Sutherland as the new doctor who is steadily learning the difficulties and trade-offs of working in a system so inexplicably and ineffectively bound by the system, experiencing this in his exchanges with an elderly patient named Sam (Eli Wallach). It is disgusting to see Sam, heralded a war hero and honored with a Silver Star, to be labeled a Gomer (patients who hang around the hospital on some unknown floor waiting to be approved for their respective treatments), only to die because the adminstrator restricted the funding so much that they couldn't perform the tests on him, leaving him to slowly die and the young doctor to scramble desperately to save his life, not being able to do much to help him, his hands tied by the system.
Keith David is excellent, too, here in another war-themed movie with John McGinnis, having previously co-starred together in 'Platoon.' David is "Luther," a disabled vet who acts as the source of reality, I suppose, of how the hospital operates, but is also a 'guardian angel' type as he protects the doctors who just want to take care of their damn patients. Luther, as evident in the finale, stages his own sort of war, one against the government when the hospital goes into lockdown, and it is not one he is willing to give up. Once fighting for his government, now his fighting against them. David also adds some good humor to the story, a bit of comic relief to this gloomy drama. Eli Wallach provides some of the same.
Ray Liotta, Kathy Baker, and John Mahoney likewise give good performances and it is the cast that really make this movie as good it is, propelled by an important story.
Good performances by all, particularly among Keifer Sutherland as the new doctor who is steadily learning the difficulties and trade-offs of working in a system so inexplicably and ineffectively bound by the system, experiencing this in his exchanges with an elderly patient named Sam (Eli Wallach). It is disgusting to see Sam, heralded a war hero and honored with a Silver Star, to be labeled a Gomer (patients who hang around the hospital on some unknown floor waiting to be approved for their respective treatments), only to die because the adminstrator restricted the funding so much that they couldn't perform the tests on him, leaving him to slowly die and the young doctor to scramble desperately to save his life, not being able to do much to help him, his hands tied by the system.
Keith David is excellent, too, here in another war-themed movie with John McGinnis, having previously co-starred together in 'Platoon.' David is "Luther," a disabled vet who acts as the source of reality, I suppose, of how the hospital operates, but is also a 'guardian angel' type as he protects the doctors who just want to take care of their damn patients. Luther, as evident in the finale, stages his own sort of war, one against the government when the hospital goes into lockdown, and it is not one he is willing to give up. Once fighting for his government, now his fighting against them. David also adds some good humor to the story, a bit of comic relief to this gloomy drama. Eli Wallach provides some of the same.
Ray Liotta, Kathy Baker, and John Mahoney likewise give good performances and it is the cast that really make this movie as good it is, propelled by an important story.