Critical Care

Updated June 26, 2020 | Infoplease Staff

A scathing, hilarious satire of the bottom-line obsessed health industry, Critical Care recalls Lumet's Oscar-winning Network with its pointed barbs as well as its overarching speechifying. Set in a big-city hospital where one's care depends on his or her ability to pay, the film follows second-year resident Werner Ernst (Spader), who has learned that MD carries a lot of clout with young, attractive women, as he learns the ropes from boozing, amoral chief resident Dr. Butz (Brooks). Ernst gets involved with a rich patient's daughter, Felicia Potter (Sedgwick), who wants to pull the plug on dear old dad, and falls into a trap when she persuades him to side with her in a lawsuit against her Bible-thumping sister (Martindale), who wants to keep dad alive. Critical Care lacks the multi-layered characters that made Network so caustically funny.