COMA (Sony, 2012) D: Mikael Salomon, w/ Lauren Ambrose, Steven Pasquale. Rating: NNN DVD package: none Rating: NNN
Coma picks up considerably in its second half, when the baddies strike back and our hero lands in serious peril.
Until then, it spends a lot of time establishing that Susan Wheeler (Lauren Ambrose) is a promising med student doing her first stint at Memorial Hospital, where the rate of patients going into irreversible comas on the operating table is way too high, that she’s in trouble with management for trying to find out why, and that it may all have something to do with a secretive coma care facility. Also brewing: student rivalry, hospital politics and more. Plus, Susan has a stalker and a would-be boyfriend (Steven Pasquale).
Some of this goes nowhere and feels like pure padding to stretch Coma to acceptable miniseries length, but it firmly establishes the power imbalances that are key to the tension. Matters are helped considerably by heavy hitters Geena Davis, Ellen Burstyn, James Woods and Richard Dreyfuss having fun in key supporting roles.
Medical thrillers don’t have the novelty shock value they did when Coma was first filmed in 1978, from Robin Cook’s 1977 novel, so director Mikael Salomon stretches out the climax, amps up the evil and injects the proceedings with a druggy vertigo that provides a nasty sense of every patient’s worst nightmare, making the slow first half worth the slog.
There are no extras, but, then, the show didn’t leave me hungering for any.
EXTRAS English audio. English, French subtitles.
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