Al Pacino gives a great performance as Dr. Jack Kevorkian, with other solid performances from John Goodman, Brenda Vaccaro, Susan Surrandon, and Danny Huston in this real life story of Dr. Kevorkian's uphill fight for everyone's right to their own life: their right to choose assisted suicide. The movie gives you Jack's side of the story and shows you the people around him that were there along the way for the dramatic ride. The film starts out with Jack at the hospital watching his wife laying in bed on life support. He says she had the same look of pain on her face as his mother did when she was struggling to die. This was the inspiration that lead Jack on his crusade for the people's right to their own life, and death. He didn't want to let anyone else have to suffer at the very end of life, and believed it was abhorrent to let someone suffer or to starve them to death by cutting their feeding tube in a hospital. He found his way more humane. At the time assisted suicide was legal in Europe, but not in the states, so what he was doing was unprecedented in the United States and, in the film, the backlash brews as he is persecuted for his politics. HBO got it right again with this great biopic.
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