Scanialara You won't be disappointed!

Usamah Harvey The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Raymond Sierra The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Cody One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

bkoganbing I'm truly surprised that The Doctor got no Oscar nominations. Maybe because it tells some uncomfortable truths about death, dying, and the medical profession. And William Hurt in the title protagonist role was certainly Oscar worthy.Hurt is a successful surgeon with all the perks that his high priced profession can give him. He has a wife, Christine Lahti and a child and lives more than comfortably. Hurt also enjoys the perks of playing God with people's lives as doctors certainly do.That all changes when Hurt is discovered to have a malignant growth in his throat. Then he becomes a patient and sees from that point of view how some in his profession treats whom it is supposed to serve.The real eye opener is Hurt meeting a terminally ill Elizabeth Perkins who is facing death with as much fear and trepidation as most of us would be doing. Hurt learns a few life lessons from her.Another performance of note is that of colleague Mandy Patinkin who Hurt sees a reflection of his former self and truly grows to despise. Still Patinkin treats the people he serves like so much cattle, I doubt he'll ever get it.Hurt is also a teaching resident in his hospital and in the end you really wish that hospitals make what he does a general policy for its new interns.The Doctor is a real eye opener of a film. Don't miss it and the Oscar caliber performances of William Hurt and Elizabeth Perkins. A rotten shame they and the film were not nominated.

Michael Neumann William Hurt is the happy-go-lucky heart and lung surgeon forced to swallow a bitter pill when he develops a malignant tumor in his throat and suddenly has to face the same impersonal treatment he prescribes for his own patients. The film works best when charting his frustration while looking down the wrong end of the stethoscope, but elsewhere Doctor Hurt's internal struggle toward a more compassionate bedside manner is conveyed through soggy domestic melodrama, with an unnecessary digression into the Nevada desert outside Reno for a pas de deux with terminal brain tumor patient Elizabeth Perkins. The script could easily have been trimmed by twenty pages; it would have been more effective (and certainly more concise) without the predictable marriage crisis. But under Randa Haines' direction the film is, thankfully, more sensitive than sentimental, with a totally convincing (and all too familiar) medical background and a first rate cast to recommend it.

moonspinner55 San Francisco surgeon--irrepressible in the operating room, inappropriately 'cute' around his sick patients, and a stranger to his wife and child--discovers he has a cancerous growth on his vocal chords. Screenwriter Robert Caswell, adapting the book "A Taste of My Own Medicine" by Ed Rosenbaum, M.D., clumsily sets the tone for this drama in his opening sequence: while performing an operation, doctor William Hurt clears his throat roughly, causing fellow medic Mandy Patinkin to look up with concern. This telegraphs the audience (in a puny, melodramatic way) that's something amiss, however the scope of the piece does improve tremendously in the picture's second act. The characters are not immediately clear, and the performances by Hurt, Christine Lahti (as his neglected spouse), and Elizabeth Perkins (as a cancer patient) suffer as a result. Hurt, in particular, is hard to get a grip on for the first two-thirds; for a film about personal redemption, he certainly takes his time learning to grow. Sub-plots regarding Hurt's relationship with his son, his friendship with Perkins, and a malpractice suit generally fare quite poorly, yet director Randa Haines knows exactly where she wants to take this movie emotionally--and she does eventually bring it across the finish line with moving results. **1/2 from ****

vm_postitnotes As a person born with a genetic disorder that suffers from a variety of maladies, I have a very hard time being sympathetic towards people in the medical profession. Many times, it seems like being a doctor requires you to turn off your heart (so to speak) and treat everything like a problem that needs to be solved, forgetting about human things like emotion and fear.This movie is very useful for people like me in that it makes doctors human again.I admit that in the past, I have often vacillated in my opinion on this movie. The main character (William Hurt) does not appear to have learned anything by this movie's conclusion. While he is more sympathetic to the fears and woes that patients suffer, much of the underlying pathology present in the medical profession in general is downplayed. For example, the variety of cancer patients that have to suffer either painful or humiliating deaths (or both) because their cases were mishandled seem to simply be put aside as mistakes that happen because doctors are human.That may be the point, though.Without spoiling excessively, the final scene of the movie involves Hurt's character getting a message from a friend of his, a terminal cancer patient played by Elizabeth Perkins that had died recently. She tells a story about a farmer who is feared by crows because he chases them violently off his farm. One day, he changes his heart and comes outside, raising his arms to welcome the crows. But no crows come - because they are terrified of the farmer's new scarecrow. Doctors have a path to follow. When they find what they are looking for, they must use their knowledge and compassion together to create a new path for themselves. They cannot expect the world to forget their distrust in a heartbeat. It takes demonstrated work.This is what "The Doctor" teaches you. Doctors and patients alike should give this movie a fair shake. It may not be a classic piece of film, but it is a very compassionate, heartfelt story.