Lorenzo's Oil
With this powerful 1992 drama, director-producer George Miller (
The Road Warrior
) proved that a movie about a disease doesn't have to be a typical disease-of-the-week movie. Based on the real-life case of the Odones family, the story concerns 5-year-old Lorenzo, suffering mightily from an apparently incurable and degenerative brain illness called A.L.D. His parents, an economist (Nick Nolte) and a linguist (Susan Sarandon), refuse to accept the received wisdom that there is no hope, and set about learning biochemistry to pursue a cure on their own. The film becomes an intriguing scientific mystery mixed with a story of pain, grief, and the strain on the two adults. In other words,
Lorenzo's Oil
is similar to all those medical-mayhem TV flicks but with some key differences: a pair of great actors in Sarandon and Nolte--who actually do some of the finest work of their careers here--and Miller's bold and typically inventive direction. Miller, a doctor himself, refuses to shirk from the chaos and horrors of a child's agony, and he makes us hear the death chains rattling behind images that would be purely sentimental in another director's hands.
--Tom Keogh
| uuid: |
16798FFB-A8D2-4A1C-B363-DADE0D1C0AF5 |
| upc: |
0025192197024 |
| title: |
Lorenzo's Oil |
| theatricalDate: |
15-01-1993 |
| purchase date: |
16-07-2006 |
| publisher: |
Universal Studios |
| published: |
06-04-2004 |
| price: |
$14.98 |
| net Rating: |
5 |
| MPAA Rating: |
PG-13 |
| minutes: |
129 |
| last lookup time: |
174732214.893006 |
| genre: |
True Story
Doctors & Patients
Docudrama |
| fullTitle: |
Lorenzo's Oil |
| features: |
Color
NTSC
1.85:1 |
| director: |
George Miller (II) |
| currentValue: |
$8.75 |
| created: |
174732146.447956 |
| country: |
us |
| aspect: |
DVD |
| asin: |
B0001CNRAM
|
