Synopsis
Augusto and Michaela Odone are dealt a cruel blow by fate when their five-year-old son Lorenzo is diagnosed with a rare and incurable disease. But the Odones' persistence and faith leads to an unorthodox cure which saves their boy and re-writes medical history.
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Cast
- Nick NolteAugusto Odone
- Susan SarandonMichaela Odone
- Peter UstinovProfessor Nikolais
- Ann HearnLoretta Muscatine
- Maduka SteadyOmuori
- Aaron JacksonFrancesco Odone
- Laura LinneyYoung Teacher
- Kathleen WilhoiteDeirdre Murphy
- Gerry BammanDoctor Judalon
- Margo MartindaleWendy Gimble
Recommendations
- 100
Chicago Sun-Times
You may have heard that Lorenzo's Oil is a harrowing movie experience. It is, but in the best way. It takes a heartbreaking story and pushes it to the limit, showing us the lengths of courage and imagination that people can summon when they must. - 90
The New York Times
As directed by George Miller, this film has an appealingly brisk, unsentimental style and a rare ability to compress and convey detailed medical data. It also displays tremendous compassion for all three Odones and what they have been through. - 90
Los Angeles Times
Where most movies lie, Lorenzo's Oil tells the truth and pays the price. In a genre rife with romantic sentimentality, this film won't trifle with its integrity and ends up not artificially uplifting but heart-rending and exhausting. Based on a true story, it shows how dreadfully hard you have to fight to make a difference, and how grueling it can be to save even a single human life. - 90
Chicago Reader
In its own quiet way this is an astonishing film, both as a medical detective story that sustains taut interest over an extended running time and as a piece of cinema combining unusually resourceful acting and direction. If any movie of recent years deserves to be called inspirational--a much-abused term that one hesitates to revive apart from exceptional circumstances--this one certainly does. - 83
Entertainment Weekly
Lorenzo’s Oil is at once harrowing and riveting. In the age of AIDS, it has telling observations to make about how the institutionalized complacency of the medical establishment actually works. As remarkable a job as Miller and the actors have done, though, the film begins to wear you down. At 2 hours and 15 minutes, it’s far too long, and (more crucially) it has a flat, repetitive structure. - 80
Empire
The only phoney note, ironically, comes from Miller's gaffe of enlisting retired Yorkshire biochemist Don Suddaby, extractor of the said oil, for a self-conscious appearance as himself. That aside, this is exhausting, intelligent and undeniably moving . - 80
Variety
Lorenzo's Oil is as grueling a medical case study as any audience would ever want to sit through. A true-life story brought to the screen intelligently and with passionate motivation by George Miller, pic details in a very precise way how a couple raced time to save the life of their young son after he contracted a rare, always fatal disease. - 75
TV Guide Magazine
An unusual piece of work that combines almost thriller-style suspense with an intelligent, neo-documentary approach to its harrowing subject.
