Out of chaos comes clarity for one man in this black comedy on the medical profession. A chief surgeon at a major NYC hospital, Dr. Bock deals with more than just bloody carnage. His routine headaches also derive from dull-witted residents, bureaucratic red tape, and social upheaval--not to mention corrupt doctors subversively plaguing his practice. Professional duties have decimated his personal life--his wife's left him and his son's now long-estranged. Whatever influence of control he maintains, it dwindles in comparison to the vastly underfunded, understaffed, under-everything hospital viewed at large; which now, evidently, has a serial murderer on the loose.It's only when a wayfaring young woman--Barbara--emerges with her own 'alternative medicine' that new life is breathed into the downtrodden doc. But even as their relationship blooms, mysterious deaths still perpetuate the hospital's already trauma-laden atmosphere.
A Paddy Chayefsky (Network, Paint Your Wagon) script combined with the talents of Scott and Rigg culminate in this award-winning dramedy full of biting satire and hilarious--if tragic--societal quandaries. Background footage of the hospital's raucous sideshow is gotta-see; so well does it mirror the frantic pandemonium commonly witnessed in person. No ounce of tranquility is found anywhere as tensions from all angles are thrust foreword, as if only the most frenzied setting could accurately depict a realistic emergency room. With Dr. Bock, it's not that he's undervalued or disrespected--rather, just the opposite. It's the ethical anguish he must confront which brings him to his knees; a morbid disillusionment with his own profession and the 'system' it abides by. Scott delivers another Oscar-worthy performance as an end-of-tether man on the verge of breakdown saved from the abyss by Barbara (Rigg), a worldly but sensitive woman privy to the inner-conflicts of exhausted men.
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