ianlouisiana Review of Terminal

Terminal (1996 TV Movie)

"Do you want it good or do you want it Wednesday?"

[2/10 · 17 February 2010]

By that frame of reference "Robin Cook's Terminal" (jokes on a postcard please) is a Tuesday midday kind of movie."Five U.S.A." showed it the other afternoon without bothering to mention that it was in fact made for TV although that became obvious quite early on when I realised nobody I had ever heard of was in it and none of them could act for toffee. Set in a hospital full of people looking grimly at CCTV screens and computer terminals but spending very little time looking after their patient,a little girl apparently suffering from a brain tumour whom they inject with cancer cells then appear surprised when she dies. Into this maelstrom steps handsome researcher Dr O'Grady who,shrewd fellow that he is,soon begins to suspect that something may be amiss. That this preposterous story was written by the Robin Cook who wrote "The French Connection" is hard to absorb.Perhaps it was our Robin Cook,former Foreign Secretary and philanderer,it's certainly the sort of nonsense that could have originated in the House of Commons. The dragged -out denouement will surprise nor thrill anyone,the Bad Guy, nostrils flaring,fails to kill Dr O'Grady and falls to his death over the Reichenbach Falls - no,sorry,over the iron railings several feet onto the floor of wherever they were fighting - I'd lost interest by then. I wish I'd watched "The Weakest Link" instead.