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DESPERATE MEASURES

Starring Andy Garcia, Michael Keaton, Marcia Gay Harden

Director Barbet Schroeder

Opens Aug. 8

In a medical center-meets-The Fugitive scenario, Garcia is the good guy, a San Francisco cop named Frank Connor whose gravely ill son needs a bone-marrow transplant to live. Keaton is the bad guy, Peter McCabe, a homicidal sociopath serving a life sentence in a maximum-security prison and, as luck would have it, the boy's perfect DNA match. But when Connor arranges for the convict to be transferred to a hospital for the transplant, the murderer seizes the opportunity to stage a diabolical escape. ''All hell breaks loose,'' says Schroeder. ''[Keaton] was evil in Pacific Heights but much more so here.''

The mood on the set, however, was heavenly by all accounts — meaning that the filming was something of a departure from Schroeder's experience on another of his high-profile shoots. The director proved his mettle for good-versus-evil suspense flicks with 1990's Reversal of Fortune and 1992's Single White Female but wrangled with star David Caruso during the production of 1995's thriller Kiss of Death (''How I had to suffer,'' moans the director).

This time around, Garcia says that he and his co-stars found Schroeder ''very available, very easygoing. Nothing fazes him.'' While shooting on location in L.A., San Francisco, and Pittsburgh, Harden (Miller's Crossing), who plays the sick boy's doctor, entertained the troops by performing character impressions. Keaton and Garcia bonded over their mutual love of fly-fishing, and both did as many of their own stunts, says Garcia, ''as the insurance company would let us do. This movie is a lot more action driven than what I was used to. There were physical obstacles — [jumping] out of windows with ropes and down elevator shafts.''

Wisely veering toward the bad-guy, character-actor mode after his departure from the Batman franchise and the disappointment of last year's Multiplicity, Keaton invited his sister to the Pittsburgh prison set to witness his transformation. ''I'm running through steam pipes and dark tunnels, and I come back from a take and see my sister smiling,'' says Keaton. ''She says, 'This is amazing. This is all you ever did as a little kid and now they're paying you.''' UPSIDE By August, audiences could be ready for an old-fashioned thriller. DOWNSIDE The two stars don't come with box office guarantees.


Posted May 16, 1997 | Published in issue #379 May 16, 1997 | Order Article Reprints