Un combat pour la vie

It's 1988. Dr. Dennis Slamon (Harry Connick Jr.) is researching a breast cancer gene treatment at the UCLA Medical Center. Jamie McGrath (Amanda Bynes) is an English Lit student who gets the assistant job that nobody wants. Slamon lacks the funds for research and the time for his family. Lilly Tartikoff (Angie Harmon) insists on fundraising for Slamon. As he works on the treatment, the movie also follows several women who discover they suffer from breast cancer.

This is based on the true story of the struggles to get approval for the breast cancer drug Herceptin. While it provides a few interesting insights into drug trials, the central story isn't actually that dramatic. The most compelling parts of the movie are some of the great actresses doing the cancer patients.

The movie was worth watching and was consciousness-raising in ways. Its depiction of the steps involved in FDA approval of drugs was informative. But the unrealistic parts of the movie made me wonder whether other parts of it were in fact accurate. For example, the cleavage shown on women said to be stage-four breast-cancer victims was laughable. And the scenes involving people undergoing chemotherapy or who had recently undergone chemotherapy were also suspect. Their full heads of hair did not appear to be wigs. My overall impression was that whoever was in charge of the details of the filming knew very little about breast cancer.

This is a wonderful movie that is based on the true story of one doctor, who refused to give up. He battled a greedy drug company for over a decade and made it through FDA clinical trials to get a groundbreaking drug approved that changed cancer treatment as we know it. This man is a national treasure.

Very good true story but the treatment of the religious type is too pronounced. The music is terrible.

Not being a woman perhaps some of it may have escaped me. Having seen this on TV at lunch time I was a little prejudiced with the association of midday movies which often are just that... However the topic interested me especially since our daughter is in research so I am a little familiar with the difficulty researchers encounter that often is not related to the value of their work. Instead it seems to be more generated with political and administrative agenda. Or simply something to do with the flavour of the year.... However the fact it was inspired directly by a very courageous effort to help those caught in a final page of their lives was worth the watching. . I don't seem to see negative reviews about this movie. However despite my interest in wanting to see it through I did found it quite melodramatic. I do understand for those affected it is a highly emotional situation. As such the little humour added here and there is also a real way to help to cope..