It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

We were out with new colleagues looking for a movie to go to after dinner. Our search took us from Wisconsin into Illinois, where "Article 99" appeared to be the most promising offering in a mall multiplex in the Waukegan area. The film was stunningly unmoving, unaffecting, unmemorable--the night such a complete waste that I simply had to bring back the title to confirm a long repressed memory (it was only the recollection of Kiefer Sutherland's credit that produced the title).There are a lot of possibilities with a film like this, which apparently attempts to be "socially relevant" humor or, as other reviewers have put it, a film with an important message. I don't buy the notion that great art--Shakespeare's plays or Faulkner's fiction--succeeds because of any "message," and the same pretty much goes for mere "entertainment." But whether realizing Welles' description of film as a "ribbon of dreams" or Godard's as "truth 24 frames per second," a film can make us participants in its storyline, situations, and conflicts while fulfilling the most important goal of art--i.e. to present an imitation of life that reveals us to ourselves-- and even imparting a sort of "message" (though I prefer Joycean "epiphany"), but we hear too many messages. The purpose of art is to make them unnecessary by giving us the "knowledge" to see for, and about, ourselves. "Article 99" succeeded in none of the foregoing areas. A film with as noteworthy a similar precedent as "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" simply left us numb, indifferent and apathetic, quickly flying out our memories.If a lesson is to be learned from viewing a movie such as this (and it's important to watch bad movies to know what a good movie is, or bad Altman films to know what a good Altman film is), it's that the setting matters little if the director's vision and approach or the screenplay's storyline doesn't "make" it matter. And in this film--apparently intent upon exposing the futility of practices occurring in a V.A. hospital--setting is everything. But the setting is cramped, collapsed, squeezed so tightly by an over-burdened script implemented by unimaginative, propaganda-grade direction that neither the audience nor the actors have any space to breathe in let alone become involved with the actions of the story.Contrast this over-controlled environment, this anal, sterile, feeble imitation of life in a V.A. hospital with Robert Altman's "controlled extemporaneousness," or imaginative vision, that gave us a completely open, vibrant and real, alternately funny, sad, and awe-inspiring, complex and unforgettable movie about a place that is also the title of the film--"Nashville." Not only are we taken on an unforgettable journey through a diverse city but we come to know and empathize with no fewer than 24 characters who are working out their destinies in the city that even now serves as a microcosm of American mass popular culture, representing all those seeking fame and fortune, celebrity and success. Ultimately, perhaps because in every viewer there's a hidden desire to be significant, to be "star" (if only in the eyes of his or her creator), we learn something about ourselves, emerging sadder but wiser for the experience. At such a moment, you also begin to see why some of us would rather read Shakespeare than Stephen King (or, after seeing "Nashville," have no patience with an Altman "dud" like "Ready to Wear," a satire of the fashion world that by the mere choice of subject is inextricably weighed down by the director's failure of vision).

There might be a good movie to be made about VA hospital neglect and mismanagement, but this certainly isn't it. The film has little to recommend it besides an attractive cast (all but invisible in their token, two-dimensional roles) and a screenplay written with obvious firsthand experience of medical red tape. Unfortunately, it was also written with every godawful comedy-drama cliché imaginable, making the film resemble a frustrated doctor's heroic third person fantasy of sex, action, gunfire, and bogus inspiration, none of it enough to distract viewers from the cardboard characters and strictly formula plot. Are all VA doctors this selfless, handsome, and good humored? And are all disabled veterans (including the maniac who drives his truck through the hospital lobby) so courageous and long-suffering? With a little more subtlety and black humor it might have been a worthwhile home front companion piece to Robert Altman's 'M*A*S*H*', but director Howard Deutch is more comfortable with crass exaggeration, limiting the film's appeal to an audience already force fed on a diet of TV ads and stale sitcoms.

Once upon a time in the Reagan administration, a cog in the cabinet discovered to his amazement that with all the US veterans floating out there from the abysmal failure in Vietnam, the sheer cost of treating them as they aged would skyrocket.Thus it was decided to abolish their problems. See in Bushist America we ignore any problem that we don't want to face.The movie brings up a valid point. The VA has failed in its mission. And the situation from the time the movie was released has worsened. With 80,000 in treatment from the latest war the issues raised by this movie are ones that need to be addressed.Regrettably by reading some hijinx from M * A * S * H into the civil service bureaucracy of the VA and creating a feel good ending the scriptwriters muted the very point they'd like to have made. I gave this a ******* 3 ******** for all its comic but unfunny unrealism. The movie compares with John Q for the unrealistic expectations foisted upon the viewer.It's betterto Tell it like it is than to pretend a social problem is getting better!

`Article 99' is a movie from director Howard Deutch (`Pretty in Pink', `The Replacements'). This movie aspired to be `The Mash of Veteran's Administration Hospital films', but never quite reached that height. It does, however, come up with a few funny one liners. The title refers to a loophole which legalizes denial of medical treatment to veterans unless their medical condition is directly caused by their military service.Dr. Richard Sturgess (Ray Liotta) is a rebellious doctor. He is the leader of a group of vigilante doctors who are trying their hardest to conjure up nonessential surgeries just so they can get patients on the operating table. This is a method seldom seen in the medical profession nowadays. A group of doctors break into a medical laboratory and steal necessary tools which are being used for research, instead of used for people who need them and they get caught. Will they surrender at this point? Watch and find out. A new and eager Dr. Peter Morgan (Keifer Sutherland) starts his first day off not so great. Besides almost killing a man, and falling in with Dr. Sturgess and the other rebellious doctors he realizes it is hard work being a doctor in a VA Hospital. He soon adapts to the turfing of patients. Dr. Morgan Grows attached to an older male patient who knows about turfing and helps Dr. Morgan turf him to get testing. Co stars include Lea Thompson as Dr. Robin Van Dorn and Kathy Baker as Dr. Diana Walton.We watch this movie waiting for surprise, and while this happens, it isn't what we expect, and this kind of disappoints us. Yes, we know the good guy always succeed in making the bad guy lose. This was is all this movie seemed to prove. I liked this movie. I feel though there could have been more of a plot. I think since the characters and actual problems were documented well for the time period. I would rate this movie one thumb up.