The Doctor (1991)

Sorry, this movie sucks

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

The efficient surgeon Dr. Jack MacKee (William Hurt) is a successful, wealthy and indifferent man, married to but distant from his wife Anne (Christine Lahti) and their son Nicky. When Jack is diagnosed with a growth in his throat, he is submitted to radiation therapy and feels how patients are treated and exposed in the hospital. He befriends the fellow patient June Ellis (Elizabeth Perkins), who has incurable brain tumor, and she gives a lesson of life to him. But his treatment does not work and Jack needs to be submitted to a surgery. What will happen to him?"The Doctor" is a sensitive drama with a magnificent story of a doctor that changes his values when he understands the perspective of patients after becoming one with cancer. William Hurt, Christine Lahti and Elizabeth Perkins have wonderful performances and the story is never corny despite the pleasant conclusion. My vote is eight.Title (Brazil): "Um Golpe do Destino" ("A Strike of the Destiny")

A doctor finds out the hard way that there's more to medicine than skill in the operating theater in this emotional drama entitled,The Doctor. It is loosely based on Dr. Edward Rosenbaum's 1988 book A Taste Of My Own Medicine.It stars William Hurt as the doctor who undergoes a transformation in his views about life, illness and human relationships.Christine Lahti,Mandy Patinkin and Elizabeth Perkins co- star and Randa Haines directs.Jack McKee is a gifted but arrogant surgeon who cares little about the emotional welfare of his patients and is little more than a benign stranger to his wife Anne and his son Nicky. Jack has been suffering from a nagging cough for some time, and when he begins coughing up blood one morning, he finally allows another doctor to take a look at him. The doctor discovers that Jack has a malignant tumor in his throat that could rob him of the ability to speak, or even kill him. Suddenly, Jack is a patient instead of a doctor, and he learns first hand about the long stretches in the waiting room, the indignity of filling out pointless forms, and the callous attitude of the professional medical community. Jack also gets to know June, a terminal cancer patient whose joyous embrace of life as her time draws to a close is an inspiration to him. Restored to health, Jack is determined to be a more caring healer and strives to be a better husband and father, but his new lease on life also earns him an enemy in fellow surgeon Murray, who wants Jack to lie under oath for him in a major malpractice case; and a new respect for Eli, an ear-nose-throat man he used to ridicule for his empathetic treatment of his patients.This is an honest, well-acted and very moving film about a cold and arrogant surgeon who learns about compassion when he becomes a cancer patient.William Hurt does a great job in the title role.It was successful at touching hearts of critics and audiences alike. It also promises to entertain and inspire you from beginning to end.A must-see film for everyone who loves great movies.

This film truly caught my attention, I just watched on TV, and was really impressed. Why? well, we could say that there probably are a lot of these films (almost a sub-genre within drama movies) when regarding to the tone, characters, existential conflicts and ideal-moral messages but I think this one stands aside. The story is very simple, the acting is great but realistic, the film is shot in a very classical style, the conflicts are there, my point is that despite we (as an audience) have all the elements at the surface, this film runs more deep and has more layers than it seems at first sight. The true power or engine here is the script, which hides beneath the great cast and wonderful directing, it allows us to think a predictable-known story in a symbolic (and political) way, opening a lot of cognitive doors that can take us apart from the plain meaning to different new levels of thinking these very same elements.For instance, we have a "doctor" who is actually tortured by the burocratics politics of the very same hospital he works for, and finds himself becoming, first a patient, afterwards something less than human (although not like Kafka's Gregor) because of the medical protocol doctors tend to follow. Also, he meets a woman who was sentenced to die by her medical insurance company (another Kafka theme, the destiny or conviction taken upon ourselves). So he ends up discovering the truth of his reality and himself, waking from his dream-death (as an institutionalized being) reforging his identity and humanity. It's interesting to find here two important's elements such as the mythological way of understanding living as a dream and death as life, like a new state of mind only perceived after dying; and second, the battle the hero in modern days fights for, his self-independency. This is obviously a political allegory against the powers that rules our lives and fates, and can-must be thought in any other line of work, but got to admit that gains another dimension by being themselves DOCTORS, and not caring at all about us, just only money motivated like a sales man would. The Doctor is much more complex and I hope people would give this film a chance, it's the exact opposite and in my opinion a future reference to what any medical(TV or film) story should aim for.p.s.: Mike Nichol's Regarding Henry it's in a similar level than this one.

San Francisco surgeon Jack McKee (William Hurt) has been a jerk his whole life. He never refers to his patients by their names and apparently never knows why they're in the hospital. In short, Jack's the opposite of Patch Adams. But then, he becomes a patient, and finds out what it's really like to be on the other side. Admittedly, this is sort of a cliché (and maybe sappy at times). But still, it's a good look at one man's change.I will say that what Jack does at the end looked a little unrealistic; I doubt that he went that far in real life. But even so, I still say that the movie is worth seeing. Not a masterpiece by any stretch, but important. Also starring Christine Lahti, Charlie Korsmo, Mandy Patinkin and Adam Arkin.