BEFORE: In what I hope are the last couple weeks before I get fully back to work, assuming I still have my second job, I've got to oversee the construction of our new bathroom, which was supposed to start last week but then got delayed over tile unavailability. So instead I'm trying to focus on health issues, get the ball rolling on fixing my hearing loss somehow - a process which I dropped in late 2018 because I got busy, plus I couldn't get a clear answer on whether it would be better to get a hearing aid or an operation, and since I was told that the operation had a 2% failure rate, I freaked out and never got the necessary CAT scan for it. Plus I was sent to some hearing aid specialist who was hawking Norwegian hearing aids (supposedly the best ones) and then found out my insurance wouldn't cover that at all, so financially it seemed out of reach.
After many attempts I got an appointment with an ENT specialist at Mt. Sinai uptown - I would have preferred to visit Mt. Sinai in Union Square because it's closer to their specialty Eye and Ear Infirmary, where one of my bosses had a successful ear operation, only I simply could not get anyone there to answer the damn phone - and their web-site would only allow me to schedule appointments with doctors uptown. OK, I figured I'd at least get my foot in their door today, and got an updated hearing test (right ear - still bad) plus a referral to a doctor at the Eye & Ear Infirmary who can discuss the risks and benefits of the proposed operation with me. This is a tough decision, and it's not made any easier by the fact that health insurance won't pay for a $500 hearing aid, but it will pay for a $13,000 operation. I can't help but think that this is a sign of why our health-care system is so screwed-up - why not make it to my benefit to choose the cheaper, less invasive potential solution?
Beyond that, why can't I just walk out of one of these doctor's offices with a working hearing aid? Why do I always get the bum's rush instead? This doctor mentioned that they HAD hearing aids, along with people who could supply me with one, only for some reason he said, "You don't want one of those..." and suggested I go buy one at Costco instead. WHY? If I went to a car dealer and said I wanted to buy a car, wouldn't it be strange if the salesman said, "Oh, you don't want one of OUR cars, believe me..." It just doesn't make any sense - perhaps I needed to be more forceful and clear, or pretended to be someone who's capable of making a decision and said, "Can I please have a hearing aid now?" Or perhaps I should actually MAKE that decision, attempt the simplest, least invasive (yet more expensive for me) solution and then at least that medical office will have a clearer mandate from me regarding how I want to try and solve the problem. Just waiting for somebody to say, "OK, here's the thing that's going to work, stick this in your ear..." doesn't seem to generate a result. I guess I'll try again next week when I'm back from Massachusetts, but these doctors need to know that I'm terrible at making decisions regarding my own care, and it took a LOT just for me to make the appointment, and also to show up for it. God, what more do they want from me?
Russell Crowe carries over again from "Proof of Life".
THE PLOT: A married couple's life is turned upside down when the wife is accused of murder.
AFTER: I've been watching over my wife's shoulder as she's gotten into playing "Grand Theft Auto V" over the last couple of weeks - she swears it's, like, the greatest video-game ever, but if I have any more time before going back to work full-time (OK, double part-time) then I'd rather replay "GTA: Liberty City Stories" and "GTA: Vice City Stories" first. (I've played through the first one before, but got stuck halfway through the second.). And I couldn't help but notice similarities to the two big rescue missions in "Proof of Life" to some of the missions she's been playing in the video-game. That sort of thing continues today, because this film is really about an attempted prison-break, like working out the plan, figuring out the personnel and skills needed for the job, and then putting the team together.
Only, here's the twist - the "team" is just one guy, John Brennan, whose wife, Lara, is in jail for murdering her boss in a parking garage. John is convinced of his wife's innocence, though for some reason he can never quite bring himself to ask the most obvious question, which is "Did you do it?" I guess it just slips his mind every time he visits her in the joint, but let me be clear, that's probably the FIRST question I'd ask my wife if she were in jail. Spouses can't be called to testify, right? Look, we all want to believe that the person we've chosen to spend our life with couldn't POSSIBLY have killed another human, but things happen - people cut off other people in traffic, people swerve their cars in and take that REALLY GOOD parking spot, and if your wife's been having a really bad day up until that point, that could be just the thing that drives her over the edge.
But let's put a pin in that for the moment, because Brennan is convinced that his wife is innocent, despite her fingerprints being on the fire extinguisher and that blood stain on her jacket. So he becomes essentially a single parent to their son, and starts to hatch a plan to get his wife out of prison, one way or another. So there's the legal way, and then there's watching a bunch of YouTube videos to learn about picking locks, hotwiring getaway cars, and where to find reversible jackets so he can disappear quickly into a crowd. Then for the bigger stuff, like evading security cameras, staking out the prison, paying off the guards, he finds a guy who wrote the book about prison escape. Literally - this guy had a best seller based on his many escapes from incarceration - and he's full of helpful advice about figuring out which countries have extradition treaties, how much money you're going to need to live in another country, and how long you're willing to go without seeing the rest of your family. Oh, and while you're at it, try not to get caught.
Another pro-tip is to create one of those giant collages of maps and news clippings on your living-room wall, because why keep your plans in a notebook or organized in a folder on your computer when you can look like an insane person who decorates with prepper conspiracy theories and ties lines of string around pushpins to prove that "It's all connected, man!" This sort of thing is sure to help the police learn your plan later, too - I mean, it's the considerate thing to do.
After almost getting caught casing out the prison, Brennan decides that it's easier to break into a medical van that transports paperwork and swap some falsified documents into his wife's file, which make her prison doctors believe she needs medical attention, and it's a lot easier to smuggle her out of a hospital than a prison, it turns out. For the longest time I couldn't figure out what he was doing by breaking into those vans. But there was a method to his madness.
The plan is, once he's got her in the car, he knows exactly how long before the police can set up roadblocks and shut down the city of Pittsburgh. All they have to do is swing by, pick up their son, get to another airport in another city, and fly to another country to start their new lives. And they'll be fine as long as nothing goes wrong, but then, that wouldn't be a very interesting movie, now, would it?
What this movie does best, however, is keep the audience guessing about whether the wife is guilty or innocent - as stated above, at some point I was starting to wonder if they were ever going to get around to this little piece of information or not. No spoilers here, but keeping it ambiguous for so long created some confusion over whether I should be rooting for Brennan's plan to succeed, or for the police to come out on top. The wife wasn't even the best person to ask, because there's the possibility that she could claim herself guilty just to drive her husband and son away for their own sakes, or to prevent her husband from concocting some elaborate plan to free her, putting himself at risk. But again, if he chooses the safe, rational path that wouldn't be a very interesting movie either, would it?
Also starring Elizabeth Banks (last seen in "Definitely, Maybe"), Brian Dennehy (last seen in "Tag"), Lennie James (last seen in "Lucky Break"), Olivia Wilde (last seen in "Richard Jewell"), Ty Simpkins (last seen in "Avengers: Endgame"), Helen Carey (last seen in "The Emperor's Club"), Liam Neeson (last seen in "Cold Pursuit"), Daniel Stern (last seen in "Very Bad Things"), Kevin Corrigan (also last seen in "Definitely, Maybe"), Jason Beghe (last heard in "Superman: Unbound"), Aisha Hinds (last seen in "Godzilla: King of the Monsters"), Tyrone Giordano (last seen in "Untraceable"), Jonathan Tucker (last seen in "Hostage"), Allan Steele, RZA (last seen in "Mr. Right"), James Ransone (last seen in "The Clapper"), Moran Atias (last seen in "You Don't Mess with the Zohan"), Michael Buie (last seen in "Bombshell"), Trudie Styler (last seen in "Zoolander 2"), Tyler M. Green, Toby J. Green, Kaitlyn Wylde, Remy Nozik (last seen in "Sleeping with Other People"), Derek Cecil, Leslie Merrill, Alissa Sullivan Haggis.
RATING: 6 out of 10 Canadian coins
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