Any film that brings attention to real world corruption should be seen, especially those that examine major health-related topics that receive little attention from the media. Puncture is one of those films. As an added bonus, it also happens to be a good movie.
Additionally, the film gives actor Chris Evans an opportunity to step outside his typical super hero and comedic characters. Here, he raises the bar for his career, demonstrating an innate ability to perform as leading man in a heavy-hitting drama. Puncture will earn him respect from even his harshest critics.
Additionally, the film gives actor Chris Evans an opportunity to step outside his typical super hero and comedic characters. Here, he raises the bar for his career, demonstrating an innate ability to perform as leading man in a heavy-hitting drama. Puncture will earn him respect from even his harshest critics.
Evans plays a hard working Houston attorney named Mike Weiss, who also happens to routinely abuse tobacco, heroin, and everything in between. His partner and friend, Paul Danziger (co-director Mark Kassen), is quite the opposite, a straight-laced young man who puts logic before emotion. Together, they make a great team.
As the movie opens, the attorneys take on a case involving Vicky (Vinessa Shaw), a local ER nurse who was pricked by an HIV-contaminated needle on the job. She contracts HIV, and contacts Mike and Paul to open a case. As the lawyers dig deeper into the nurse's claims, they uncover a massive health care and pharmaceutical conspiracy.
A contemporary David and Goliath story, Puncture shines light on a little publicized, real life case that occurred a while back when the two largest hospital group purchasing organizations and a large syringe manufacturer shut a man's "safety needle" out of the market.
The film explains that accidental needle sticks cause many thousands of US nurses to be infected by HIV, Hepatitis C, and other infectious diseases each year. By using these "safety needles," hospitals would effectively protect front end health care professionals from such risks. Using the new devices, however, would affect current business relationships, and the corporations don't want that...even if it would save countless lives over time.
Unquestionably passionate about the issues their film explores, producers and co-directors Adam Kassen and Mark Kassen have assembled a powerful, well-researched, and expertly told drama that grabs our attention from the first scene and doesn't let go until the final moments, despite a few overlooked elements of the story.
Alas, behold Chris Evans, who finally gets to sink his teeth into a juicy, complex dramatic role. Mike Weiss is a complicated character, one based on a real person who has since passed away. In the film, the man has good intentions and a heart of gold, but is plagued with emotional instability and self destructive tendencies.
Evans captures the role's duality with natural charisma. We can see, in his eyes, a desire to do the right thing, and it breaks our hearts to see the man fall prey to his addictions again and again. Evans delivers the best performance of his career to date, hands down. He brings the film to a higher level of drama.
More often than not, members of the media evaluate issue-driven films like Puncture without discussing the issue in focus. While our duties as film critics don't necessarily include such, as media, it is our duty to spread the word about worthy topics when appropriate. And it seems so here.
Yes, Puncture is a quality film worth seeing. More importantly, though, it brings awareness to a real life example of our nation's perpetual state of profit-driven corruption, which all too often fails to make the headlines. Even more importantly, the film shows that, even when up against a corporate giant, the little people can win a fight...sometimes.
