Medical conspiracy thriller about organ donation on Netflix Streaming. This is a little gem of a movie about Paul Stanton (played superbly by Dermot Mulroony) and his wife Diane (Diane Kruger) who have a young daughter who is dying of a lung disease. Paul is a State Prosecutor who is a man of conviction. He is prosecuting a man who shot a child molester who was hitting on his son (though had not yet done anything). While the shooter’s justification was that he was protecting his son against what the registered sex offender was GOING to do, Paul is set up as a believer in legal due process against vigilante violence in the name of protecting even our children. He supports the law against our emotion, and the need to engage due process or we lose our souls. But Paul is a man of justice, because he is NOT in favor of the sleazy defendant either. He pursues justice under the law.
But Paul’s daughter’s death is imminent, and it appears she will not receive lungs as organ donation. In fact, the system is so screwed up that organs expire while in impossible transit to others higher on the list rather than the closest person in need. So in their case, following the rules results in more death. So Paul becomes desperate and finds out there is a way to avoid all the unfair rules and regulations in America that keep victims from receiving organs: Mexico has lax laws and plenty of organs from dead people because of its three times the homicide rate.
So he does what any loving father would do, go to Mexico and face life threatening danger in order to find a pair of lungs to save his daughter. Of course he has to journey though the dark belly underworld of this enterprise filled with a mixture of creepy criminals and compromising do-gooders.
The movie really shows the pressing reality of the desperation that anyone would feel when all options have been unfairly taken away from them, when it does not need to be that way. There are plenty of donors to fill the need. It’s just that the bureaucracy of the law actually impedes the good rather than provides for it. So Paul’s dedication to law is challenged and he is forced to rethink his values and convictions. This movie presents a real world moral dilemma that addresses an important issue at the heart of our ethics. What do you do when the system works against justice or goodness?
But just when Paul discovers where the organs really come from, he is faced with an even greater moral dilemma. He is put into the position of the man he was prosecuting at the beginning of the story. And he must decide: Should he do wrong in order to achieve the good on behalf of his own child? Is any price worth saving our loved ones? What is the value of human life if we deny others that value?
His decision is heroic and satisfying, but not without its pain and loss in the real world. Thus making it a rich moral fable with conviction. I recommend this movie for a heart wrenching moral journey of character and integrity.