William Hurt is the happy-go-lucky heart and lung surgeon forced to swallow a bitter pill when he develops a malignant tumor in his throat and suddenly has to face the same impersonal treatment he prescribes for his own patients. The film works best when charting his frustration while looking down the wrong end of the stethoscope, but elsewhere Doctor Hurt's internal struggle toward a more compassionate bedside manner is conveyed through soggy domestic melodrama, with an unnecessary digression into the Nevada desert outside Reno for a pas de deux with terminal brain tumor patient Elizabeth Perkins. The script could easily have been trimmed by twenty pages; it would have been more effective (and certainly more concise) without the predictable marriage crisis. But under Randa Haines' direction the film is, thankfully, more sensitive than sentimental, with a totally convincing (and all too familiar) medical background and a first rate cast to recommend it.
Review of The Doctor
