Film Review: Extraordinary Measures Fact-based drama about a fathers fight to find a cure for his childrens debilitating

disease is intelligent and involving. Jan 22, 2010 -By Doris Toumarkine

For movie details, please click here. First the good news about CBS Films first foray into theatrical since the long gone days of CBS Theatrical Films decades ago. Extraordinary Measures, a fact-based family drama plus business primer (with a light sprinkling of medical-thriller elements), is a fine accomplishment and entertaining ride. The less hopeful news is that similar high-quality, involving efforts that sought safe refuge in the comfortable middle ground ( Akeelah and the Bee, Flash of Genius, etc.) failed to do the theatrical business they so deserved. Yes, the middle-of-the-road Blind Side has surprised by breaking through, but Extraordinary Measures might be shackled with that maybebest-for-TV ankle chain. Yet it is so much more. As wisely adapted by Robert Nelson Jacobs ( Chocolat), skillfully directed by Scotland-born Tom Vaughan ( Starter for Ten), and superbly acted by stars Brendan Fraser and Harrison Ford, the film works on several fronts. Much of the credit also goes to the screen-ready true story that inspired the script. John Crowley (Brendan Fraser) is a fast-track corporate executive, but theres trouble on the home front. He and loving wife Aileen (Keri Russell) have three young children, two of whom, Megan (Meredith Droeger) and Patrick (Diego Velazquez), are stricken with the usually fatal, muscular dystrophy-like Pompe disease, for which there is no cure. Jolted to action after Megan suffers a near-fatal setback, John aggressively goes after an academic researching the disease who he found on the Internet. This grumpy, downright rude and abrasive oddball is the University of Nebraskas Dr. Robert Stonehill (Harrison Ford), whose research on Pompe shows promise. After several futile tries, John is able to collar Stonehill and plea for his help in finding a cure. When Stonehill complains of lack of funding, John impulsively jumps to the challenge, promising to raise the half-million the doctor needs to further his studies. John bolts from his cushy corporate job to form a foundation with Aileen. With her support and financial help from people like Atlantas Marcus Temple (Courtney B. Vance), whose child has Pompe, John miraculously raises the money. But Stonehill throws a curve: Aware that John has a business degree from Harvard, the doctor demands that he and John go private with their effort and form a biotech company. That path requires John to pitch a Chicago venture-capital group headed by Dr. Renzler (David Clennon). Eventually, John and Robert get their bucks but are forced to sell their company (and pocket several million!) to Zymagen, a large, established biotech outfit headed by the smart and sensible Dr. Eric Loring (Patrick Bauchau). John easily re-adapts to the corporate environment, but Robert, who had lived in a remote, rural Nebraska cabin and worked in a funky, music-filled lab at the university, doesnt warm to the sleek, sterile glass-and-concrete world that is Zymagens campus. Nor is he a fit for the rigid corporate culture. In fact, for Zymagen executive Dr. Kent Webber (Jared Harris)the ultimate corporate suitStonehill is a spoiler. While Stonehill is the proverbial square peg, Johns business acumen makes him an effective mediator. He also helps revise Zymagens rulebook by getting four competing core research teams to collaborate on building the enzyme needed to fight Pompe. Twisting and turning via reveals and setbacks, while delivering easy-to-swallow, dummy-like doses of information about medical research and venture capital, the story leads to a clever and satisfying conclusion.

Director Vaughans only slips are into some shallow gooeyness. Hes prone to lots of joyful kiddie scenes, and stricken Megan is relentlessly cute. And the all-American, all-love family he fashions is almost too perfect for words. But Fraser again demonstrates that he can carry a film, while Ford shows he can really stretch.

Movie Review Extraordinary Measures (2010)

Merie Wesimiller Wallace/CBS Films Harrison Ford in Extraordinary Measures, directed by Tom Vaughan. Desperate Fathers Plea to a Detached Scientist By A. O. SCOTT Published: January 21, 2010 Recommend Twitter Linkedin Sign In to E-Mail Print

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Extraordinary Measures, a movie about a medical breakthrough, is not especially eager to break new ground of its own. Directed with care and competence by Tom Vaughan (What Happens in Vegas), the film hews closely to familiar themes and patterns. One strand is a drama about a family in crisis, with parents facing the illness and possible death of two of their children, who suffer from a fatal genetic disorder. Another piece is a buddy picture, in which a mismatched pair of guys one earnest and emotive (Brendan Fraser), the other gruff and solitary (Harrison Ford) set off on an unlikely adventure, hoping to find a cure. More About This Movie Overview New York Times Review Cast, Credits & Awards Readers' Reviews Trailers & Clips

View Clip... Related With New Films, CBS Charts Tough Middle Course (January 19, 2010) But also, and more unusually, the film, adapted by Robert Nelson Jacobs from a nonfiction book by the journalist Geeta Anand, is an examination of how medical research is conducted and financed. This is the main reason that Extraordinary Measures, the first feature released by CBS Films, rises above some of its made-for-TV trappings. (The presence of established big-screen stars doesnt hurt either.) The storytelling and the visual style are rarely more than workmanlike, and the big scenes arrive punctually and are played with minimal nuance. But the dogged, unflashy presentation of emotionally charged, complicated material works to the films advantage. The lump-in-the-throat elements take care of themselves the sight of sweet and lively children in hospital beds has a way of opening up audience tear ducts, even without swelling musical cues but the startling thing about Extraordinary Measures is not that it moves you. Its that you feel, at the end, that you have learned something about the way the world works. Mr. Fraser, his eternal boyishness comfortably expanding in a pudgy 40-something frame, plays John Crowley, a midlevel executive at Bristol-Myers Squibb whose two younger children, a son and a daughter, suffer from a rare, inherited form of muscular dystrophy called Pompes disease. (The oldest son, played by Sam M. Hall, is unaffected). John and his wife, Aileen (Keri Russell), do their best to give Megan (Meredith Droeger) and Patrick (Diego Velazquez), who use wheelchairs and breathing tubes, a normal life, with bowling alley birthday parties and trips to the beach. After the rest of the family has gone to bed, John rifles through scholarly journals and trawls the Internet, searching for some inkling of a cure and wondering how much time Megan and Patrick have left. His inquiries lead him to Robert Stonehill, a University of Nebraska professor played with sublime cantankerousness by Harrison Ford (and a composite character based on several scientists portrayed in Ms. Anands book). Motivated by sheer scientific curiosity, and impelled by a stubborn, go-it-alone work ethic, Stonehill thinks he has isolated an enzyme that has the potential to arrest the progress of Pompes disease, which usually kills its victims at the age of 8 or 9. Crowley impulsively promises to finance Stonehills experiments and hurriedly sets up a foundation for that purpose. But they soon abandon the nonprofit route and put together a start-up company in the middle of the prairie. This requires tense visits with venture

capitalists (including one played by the ever-silky David Clennon and then a plan, resisted by Stonehill, to sell out to a big biotechnology firm in Seattle). The evolution of their business plan, along with the pursuit of the treatment that will save Megan and Patrick, is what holds Extraordinary Measures together. This is not to say that the movie is a bloodless scientific procedural. Crowleys visits home, and Ms. Droegers adorable spunkiness, prevent that. But the film resists the temptation to turn into a full-blown family melodrama. There are tensions and stresses between John and Aileen, but they also deal with an awful situation in the matter-of-fact, practical way that loving parents often do, and the film is all the more moving because, for the most part, it understates their grief and anxiety. And the temperamental contrast between Stonehill and Crowley is also handled without too much exaggeration, though of course there are the requisite scenes of seething and shouting and storming in and out of offices. The desperate fathers impatience is often at odds with the scientists detachment, but Extraordinary Measures is ultimately about how feeling and objectivity can work together, and also about how the protocols of medical research and development can both enable and obstruct progress. While there is one corporate heavy an executive played by Jared Harris he is less a villain than the embodiment of a way of doing business that both Crowley and Stonehill must contend with. And even if he seems hard-hearted and bureaucratic in his insistence on conducting experiments and clinical trials by the book, the filmmakers dont suggest that hes entirely wrong. Nor do they offer a simplistic account, either scolding or celebratory, of the relationship between big money and medical progress. The result, while nothing extraordinary, is nonetheless satisfying. Extraordinary Measures is rated PG. Mild swearing and children in distress. News: A review of Extraordinary Measures Posted by Jef Akst [Entry posted at 22nd January 2010 12:05 PM GMT] View comments(11) | Comment on this news story Rare diseases and drug discovery don't usually make for Hollywood blockbusters. But today (January 22) a film about a genetic affliction that strikes fewer than 10,000 people worldwide hits movie screens, and it has some serious star power behind it. Harrison Ford and Brendan Fraser head up the cast of Extraordinary Measures, a new movie that may lift Pompe disease from the shadows of obscurity into the spotlight, as the focal point of an inspirational story of paternal love and scientific innovation.

A screen shot from the movie. Note The Scientist's poking cameo appearance next to the computer(black arrow). Image: YouTube trailer (screen shot) "The movie is a great exposure for a rare genetic disease," said Duke University School of Medicine's Priya Kishnani, who studies Pompe and participated in much of the research that led to the first and only approved treatment for the disease -- a quest that forms the central plot of the film. "I would have never thought in my lifetime, a disease that I'm so passionate about would make it into mainstream Hollywood cinema." Extraordinary Measures tells the tale of businessman John Crowley (played by Fraser) who makes it his mission to promote the

development of an enzyme therapy to treat his two youngest children, who are sick with Pompe. Teaming up with University of Nebraska researcher Robert Stonehill (Ford), Crowley starts a small biotech company called Priozyme dedicated to his purpose. (In reality, the researcher who helped Crowley was William Canfield of the University of the Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, and the company Crowley launched was called Novazyme.) Pompe disease is a genetic lysosomal storage disorder. Any of the nearly 300 mutations in the lysosomal enzyme acid -glucosidase (GAA) gene that affect its function can result in either infantile- or late-onset accumulation of glycogen in muscle tissues. Pompe destroys skeletal muscle, impairing motor skills and usually relegating patients to wheelchairs. The disease also compromises lung and heart function, with most Pompe patients ending up on ventilators with inflamed and failing hearts. Infants with Pompe disease typically survive less than one year, while late onset patients can suffer only mild symptoms for years before experiencing an abrupt decline. As the movie depicts, Novazyme was eventually bought out by Genzyme (Zymagen in the movie), a larger biotech company that was also developing a Pompe therapy and had purchased two others. Now with four different enzymes to choose from, Genzyme ran what they call the "Mother of All Experiments," pitting the four candidates against one another in blinded biochemical analyses and mouse model tests to see which held the most promise. Once the results were in, a group that included Canfield, as well as Genzyme's vice president, Robert Mattaliano, selected the winner, revealing the drug's identity by decoding the color-schemed key. There was "this great collage of [people with] the desire to come up with something would serve the needs of this patient population," Mattaliano told The Scientist. "It was quite a team effort." The winner -- a recombinant human form of the GAA enzyme (rhGAA) produced in a Chinese hamster ovary cell line -- was the subject of three clinical trials: one for infantile-onset Pompe patients, one for patients aged 3 months to 3.5 years, and one for the two Crowley children, who were able to receive treatment at a local New Jersey hospital near their home after their father left his position at Genzyme. The trials showed significantly decreased mortality, and patients were able to survive longer without the aid of a ventilator, and some even demonstrated increased motor function. In 2006, the treatment, an intravenous enzyme replacement therapy dubbed Myozyme, became the first and only approved treatment for Pompe disease. While Crowley's children are still on respirators, they are responding well to their Myozyme treatments, which they continue to this day. Extraordinary Measures tells this story with remarkable accuracy (albeit with some minor Hollywood name changes and plot tweaks), and shines a light on Pompe that rarely touches most rare diseases. But somewhere in the recounting of this emotionally driven tale, the viewer, at least the scientifically-inclined one, is alienated from the realities of the disease. The sick children, while on ventilators and in wheelchairs, speak with ease -- an overly optimistic picture of Pompe patients, who often have much more difficulty communicating. The movie also typecasts theoretical endeavors as idealistic and even useless, dismissing a branch of research that provides the basis of most bench and clinical work.

The film does a better job of representing the hard-to-swallow fiscal issues of drug development. "The movie emphasizes how these things can be monetized," University of Florida pediatric cardiologist Barry Byrne told The Scientist. "Everything cannot be done at the research level," added Byrne, who was involved in the clinical trials of Myozyme. "Without investments from a company like Genzyme to bring these products to patients there would be no benefit to patients in the long run." Since the development of Myozyme, research on treatments for Pompe disease has continued and expanded. Most recently, Byrne opened a clinical trial to test a gene therapy supplement to the enzyme replacement therapy. A handful of biotechs are also developing new Pompe drugs, including Genzyme which is currently working on their second generation compound. "It's really striking that for such a small community of patients that there is so much interest," Byrne said. "And [hopefully it will be] catalyzed by the public interest in the film." Read more: A review of <i>Extraordinary Measures</i> - The Scientist - Magazine of the Life Sciences http://www.thescientist.com/blog/display/57091/#ixzz1yDsk8vs0