Q:Build a movie plot around this: What saves John the first time he tries to shoot himself? The gun's safety is on.
A:
The film opens to a young woman (Gabriela Oltean) recklessly driving a BMW down a mountain highway. After being hit by two trucks, she dies (this whole ordeal is interspersed throughout the movie).John Quincy Archibald (Denzel Washington) and his wife Denise (Kimberly Elise) witness their young son Michael (Daniel E. Smith) collapse at his baseball game. After a series of tests at the hospital, John is informed by Dr. Raymond Turner (James Woods) and Rebecca Payne (Anne Heche), a hospital administrator, that Michael has an enlarged heart and will need a transplant. However because the company he works for dropped John from full-time to part-time, his health insurance has been changed and the new policy does not cover the surgery, leaving them to raise 30% ($75,000) of the $250,000 in order to get their son's name on the donor list. The family tries to raise the money but are only able to come up with a third of the necessary payment. Eventually the hospital gets tired of waiting and decides to release Michael, leading Denise to tell John to "do something." Unwilling to let his child die, John walks into the hospital ER with a handgun, gathers hostages, and sets demands: his son's name on the recipient list as soon as possible. The hostage negotiator, Lt. Frank Grimes (Robert Duvall), stands down to let John cool off.Meanwhile, John and the 11 hostages communicate and learn more about each other. They begin to understand John's situation and support him a little as he ensures each of them receive the treatment they came to the emergency room for. One of them, Miriam (Troy Beyer), is pregnant, and her husband Steve (Troy Winbush) is hoping that their first kid is healthy. A young hostage, Julie (Heather Wahlquist), has a broken arm, and she and her boyfriend Mitch (Shawn Hatosy) claim that a car crash caused it, but due to some holes in their story John and another hostage, Lester (Eddie Griffin), are able to conclude that the two are lying and that Mitch had actually beat Julie up.After a while John agrees to...