"You Don't Know Jack" movie review
Jack Kevorkian, whom the media oftly refer to as "Doctor Death", gained notoriety in the medical world for audaciously promoted a peaceful termination to agonising lives of people struck with incurable diseases. You Don't Know Jack is a biographical movie of his dealings with the issue of mercy-killing, starring the legendary actor Al Pacino as the lead role.
The intro started with Kevorkian regretting to have seen his own mother dying in such pain during the last days of her life. Partially blaming himself for not taking action, he henceforth intended to give peace to those people who no longer have any satisfying or fulfilling lives, such as those sentenced with Lou Gehrig's disease, pancreatic cancer, and other terminal illnesses. However, he was not the Grim Reaper as some cult fiction portrays him to be. For one, he does not even charge those patients. Also, before he could end a patient's life (painlessly) with a gas device, he always made sure that he videotaped one last interview with the patients and their family, in order to ensure the legal system in the future that he did not just murder those patients on a whim. He even dissuaded most patients from ending their lives when there was still hope. Such a case was shown when Kevorkian asked a patient whose body was slightly scarred from a fire accident to refrain from suicidal wills. Kevorkian told him that the real problem was not the fire burns but clinical depression, which was curable. Eventually, that patient decided to choose life, which Kevorkian happily obliged.
The latter half of the movie deals with Kevorkian's legal battles against the state of Michigan, which sparked a ferocious nationwide debate on the issue of mercy-killing.
I personally find the movie highly amusing due to the fact that it is well-produced. Al Pacino plays Kevorkian so well that he even adopts Kevorkian's Detroit accent. The movie also carries a sardonic, comical undertone by showing Kevorkian's genius outside the medical field (he sold some surrealistic paintings to art galleries) and the soundtrack of Bach played throughout the duration(who is Kevorkian's favourite musician).
In the end, it does not matter whether you are a conservative religious or an atheist...it is highly likely that you will find this movie as amusing as I did. You Don't Know Jack does not attempt to argue on whether physician-assisted suicide is right or wrong. It is, simply put, a movie about Kevorkian's dealings with euthanasia, his patients, and the consequences he would face later on in public.
The morality behind euthanasia is for yourself to decide.
Rating: 8 stars out of 10
