A young woman named Nancy Greenly goes into hospital for a routine abortion, but something goes wrong during the operation and she goes into an irreversible coma. Susan Wheeler, a young doctor at the hospital was a close friend of Nancy, and when she starts looking into her friend's death she finds a disturbing pattern. Over the last few years the same thing has happened to numerous young, relatively healthy patients during routine operations. The numbers are far higher than would be statistically expected, but when Susan tries to voice her concerns she is met first with complacency, then with obstruction, and finally with threats that her career will be at risk if she persists in investigating this matter. Even her boyfriend and fellow-doctor, Mark Bellows, refuses to believe that anything sinister is going on. Undeterred, Susan continues to investigate, only to find that she has stumbled upon a horrifying conspiracy and that her own life is in danger.
Today, a plot like this would seem quite commonplace; the Hugh Grant vehicle "Extreme Measures" from the mid-nineties is so similar to "Coma" that it virtually qualifies as an unacknowledged remake. In the seventies, however, such a plot probably seemed much more original. Although there were exceptions, such as the sadistic surgeon played by Charles Coburn in "King's Row", Hollywood had hitherto generally portrayed the medical profession in a good light, so the idea that doctors and nurses could be murderous villains rather than selfless, idealistic healers was no doubt shocking.
The film also makes good use of its setting. As another reviewer has pointed out, many thrillers make use of dark, claustrophobic settings, so it must have been a challenge to the ingenuity of writer/director Michael Crichton, himself a former doctor, to conjure up an atmosphere of suspense in a cold, clinical, brightly lit hospital. (Alfred Hitchcock took on a similar challenge in "North by North West" when he succeeded brilliantly in creating a sense of menace during the crop-duster sequence, set in daylight in the flat, wide open Illinois prairie). Some of the suspense sequences in "Coma" have a particularly macabre quality to them, especially the scene where Susan is menaced by a villain in a refrigerator filled with corpses in body-bags.
Michael Douglas (in one of his earliest starring roles as Mark) is adequate but seldom more than that. He gives little indication that he was on the verge of stardom as one of Hollywood's biggest names of the eighties and nineties. Genevieve Bujold, however, is rather better as Susan, making her an attractively determined heroine, and there are good supporting performances from Richard Widmark as Dr Harris, Susan's paternalistic boss who may not be all he seems, and from Elizabeth Ashley as Mrs Emerson, the weird, zombie-like nurse (a sort of Stepford Wife of the medical world) at the sinister Jefferson Institute where the coma patients are taken. One can also spot a few stars of the future in minor roles, such as Tom Selleck, Ed Harris and Bond-Girl-to-be Lois Chiles as Nancy.
There are (as others have pointed out) a number of holes in the plot- I could not, for example, understand why the medical establishment of the hospital were so complacent about the number of patients they were losing to coma. I won't detail the other plot-holes as to do so would be to give away too much of the plot. These are not, however, the sort of weaknesses that are likely to spoil one's enjoyment of the film, but rather the sort that become apparent when one sits down to analyse it later, or when one sees it for a second time (as I did recently). Some commentators have called this film "Hitchcockian". Whereas in quality it is by no means up to Hitchcock at his best, it is a reasonably exciting, if modest, thriller. 6/10
Today, a plot like this would seem quite commonplace; the Hugh Grant vehicle "Extreme Measures" from the mid-nineties is so similar to "Coma" that it virtually qualifies as an unacknowledged remake. In the seventies, however, such a plot probably seemed much more original. Although there were exceptions, such as the sadistic surgeon played by Charles Coburn in "King's Row", Hollywood had hitherto generally portrayed the medical profession in a good light, so the idea that doctors and nurses could be murderous villains rather than selfless, idealistic healers was no doubt shocking.
The film also makes good use of its setting. As another reviewer has pointed out, many thrillers make use of dark, claustrophobic settings, so it must have been a challenge to the ingenuity of writer/director Michael Crichton, himself a former doctor, to conjure up an atmosphere of suspense in a cold, clinical, brightly lit hospital. (Alfred Hitchcock took on a similar challenge in "North by North West" when he succeeded brilliantly in creating a sense of menace during the crop-duster sequence, set in daylight in the flat, wide open Illinois prairie). Some of the suspense sequences in "Coma" have a particularly macabre quality to them, especially the scene where Susan is menaced by a villain in a refrigerator filled with corpses in body-bags.
Michael Douglas (in one of his earliest starring roles as Mark) is adequate but seldom more than that. He gives little indication that he was on the verge of stardom as one of Hollywood's biggest names of the eighties and nineties. Genevieve Bujold, however, is rather better as Susan, making her an attractively determined heroine, and there are good supporting performances from Richard Widmark as Dr Harris, Susan's paternalistic boss who may not be all he seems, and from Elizabeth Ashley as Mrs Emerson, the weird, zombie-like nurse (a sort of Stepford Wife of the medical world) at the sinister Jefferson Institute where the coma patients are taken. One can also spot a few stars of the future in minor roles, such as Tom Selleck, Ed Harris and Bond-Girl-to-be Lois Chiles as Nancy.
There are (as others have pointed out) a number of holes in the plot- I could not, for example, understand why the medical establishment of the hospital were so complacent about the number of patients they were losing to coma. I won't detail the other plot-holes as to do so would be to give away too much of the plot. These are not, however, the sort of weaknesses that are likely to spoil one's enjoyment of the film, but rather the sort that become apparent when one sits down to analyse it later, or when one sees it for a second time (as I did recently). Some commentators have called this film "Hitchcockian". Whereas in quality it is by no means up to Hitchcock at his best, it is a reasonably exciting, if modest, thriller. 6/10