I am not the only viewer who believes that "Threshold," a very low key drama at first viewing, is outstanding film. One online review considered it one of a personal "unknown 'ten best.'" I watch it again and again, completely absorbed by the intense concentration with which Donald Sutherland plays Dr. Thomas Vrain, a highly skilled and dedicated cardiovascular surgeon.
Vrain meets, and has his hospital retain the services of, an offbeat biologist, Aldo Gehring (Jeff Goldblum), who is pursing the invention of an artificial heart. Against all advice and straining medical ethics, Dr. Vrain performs a successful transplant of Gehring's artificial heart to save a patient with an otherwise hopeless congenital defect.
"Threshold" is a meticulously crafted production with impeccable, nearly mesmerizing performances in the even most minor roles. Sutherland is at his best in this film, creating so realistic a portrait of a brilliant surgeon that one physician reviewer on this site claimed to recognize several surgeons known to him personally, with Sutherland embodying both their strengths and weaknesses. Perhaps the most notable attribute of the fictitious Dr. Vrain is his total, and no doubt indispensable, commitment to and absorption in his skill. One of the film's advisors was Dr. Denton Cooley, a pioneering Dallas Surgeon; under whom Sutherland studied, and seems to have managed to portray with utter fidelity as the leading character. Cooley was the first surgeon to use an artificial heart in a patient with an irreparable heart. He was professionally reprimanded for doing it with¬out approval and so started his own hospital, The Texas Heart Institute. The film very loosely follows this little known event, and it is worth seeing if only for the strength of Sutherland's portrayal, no less than its high production values and the assured performances of the entire cast.
This was a Canadian production. For some reason it was never transcribed to DVD in Canada, although versions are available from the Czech Republic, Germany, even Greece. I have a gradually deteriorating VHS tape, which will no doubt wear out in the watching of it. The vagaries of licensing agreements seem to have claimed yet another creative victim.
