John Crowley (Brendan Fraser) is, for the time being, the doting father of three kids. One son and a beatifically-smiling daughter could go any day; both are wheelchair-bound and on respirators, afflicted with a degenerative genetic disorder called Pompe disease. Shaken up by another emergency-ward close call, Crowley quits his marketing job to make a pilgrimage to Nebraska and corner Dr. Robert Stonehill, a university medical researcher working out an enzyme treatment for Pompe (mostly by writing on a dry-erase board). Executive Producer Harrison Ford plays Stonehill as a "loose cannon"—that is, he drives a beat-up Ford Ranger, cranks up Boomer FM gold in the lab, and scares off sources of potential research funding with his irascible prickliness.
Extraordinary Measures is best when dealing with the connection between family life and economics, personal passion and impersonal institutions (the background is mostly labs, hospitals, and corporate parks). Business-savvy Crowley, frantic for a chance to save his kids, convinces Stonehill that he can raise funds for a biotech start-up to put the underfunded doctor's theories into practice. To work toward the greater good of an expedited cure, both men will adapt—and compromise—themselves to the rules of the game, as Crowley, for an infusion of corporate cash, has to forget his personal stake to talk about "acceptable loss" and pitch the "highly lucrative" potential of a possible treatment. (Extraordinary Measures, billed as "Inspired by a True Story," has made its own compromises to screen drama—there is a real John Crowley who might basically descry his own life here, but no real Stonehill.)
Andrea Guerra's emotionally-instructive score gunks up every crack and corner in the movie. But even while winning the generic title sweepstakes, Extraordinary Measures works according to its terms. Fraser is open and appealing, and Ford, his acting mostly isolated in the right corner of his mouth, does well enough with a secondary part. Stonehill's curmudgeonliness is even fitting an actor who's evinced no visible pleasure in being on-screen for a decade or more.
