Desperate Measures

Frank Connor, a lone parent cop, competes with the police force on a manhunt for escaped con McCabe, and finds himself in a no man's land between hunter and prey. The cops want the fugitive dead, and Frank wants his bone marrow to save his little boy. The title describes the film's strategy of victimising the child, a leukaemia patient whose pre-op vulnerability is exploited first to enable McCabe's escape, and then later as he becomes a hostage to the latter's fortunes. Keaton plays the con like Hannibal Lecter: a multiple murderer who can outwit his captors, unblinking, droll and occasionally vicious. Garcia is a rather dull embodiment of earnest persistence, and Harden flits in and out in an under-explored role as the boy's surgeon.