There is nothing wrong with the quality cast of Nick Cassavetes' hospital hostage-taking drama John Q.

The actors include Denzel Washington, fresh from his Oscar nomination as best actor for Training Day, and veterans Robert Duvall, Anne Heche, Ray Liotta, James Woods and impressive rising star Kimberly Elise.

Except for some mugging by Liotta in a thankless role as a pompous twit, the performances are all solid, workmanlike and occasionally inspired. Washington and Elise in particular seem perfectly suited to their roles as a struggling, small-town working class couple who are shocked to discover that their young son has a heart condition.

The situation is so serious that the boy (Shawn Hatosy) needs a heart transplant -- quickly -- after collapsing during a baseball game. He is taken to hospital, of course. This being a made-in-Toronto Hollywood movie, Canadians might recognize the hospital as Toronto's downtown courthouse, the one sitting next to City Hall. And the factory scenes, with Washington at work, were shot in Cambridge, Ont.

Meanwhile, because this is a tear-jerker, it turns out that the factory has downgraded our hero's health insurance and won't fund an operation. The movie contains a lot of superficial criticism of U.S. health care, without much insight.

The hospital, which is run by Heche as a hard-nosed administrator and includes Woods as a doctor on the money hussle, wants the kid kicked out if the parents can't cough up the dough.

So Washington snaps. Born out of love, fuelled by selflessness, a father's frustration turns to temporary insanity. He takes the emergency ward hostage by gunpoint. Duvall and Liotta show up as the senior cops on the case, Duvall as the cool negotiator, Liotta as the preening hotshot. The media swarms the place and makes asses of themselves, the usual stupid cliched depiction of reporters by Hollywood.

The plot, written by James Kearns, stretches credulity to the extreme. There are teeth-clenching logic leaps. But it might have worked on the strength of the actors' dedication if Cassavetes had restrained some of the other elements.

No such luck. As the movie deteriorates into melodrama, Aaron Zigman's music score and some unfortunate songs, such as Patti LaBelle's The Voice Inside My Heart and Stevie Wonder's Justice Of The Heart, are layered on so thick it hurts. The movie becomes unwatchable at times.

It is as if the filmmakers did not trust us to understand the angst and rage of the protagonist and the threat a dying son poses to a family.

Director Cassavetes, whose own teenaged daughter is sick and needs a heart transplant, may care so much he wanted to make sure we did. But he still did not need to force the movie's emotional temperature to the scorching point.

In the end, not even a strong cast can save this movie.