Rotten Tomatoes

Movies / TV

    Celebrity

      No Results Found

       View All       Movies Tv shows Shop News Showtimes

      The Widowmaker

      2015 1 hr. 35 min. Documentary List
      100% 7 Reviews Tomatometer 77% 50+ Ratings Audience Score Filmmaker Patrick Forbes investigates whether a hidden battle fought inside America's medical establishment may be needlessly condemning certain heart-attack victims to death. Read More Read Less

      Audience Reviews

      View All (9) audience reviews
      Audience Member More than likely you will have heart problems sometime in your life. Learn about it and check your health insurance. There's a short but very important note about Kaiser and what they think of you in here. Rated 5 out of 5 stars 01/20/23 Full Review Audience Member I have been a Cardiac Nurse for 26 years working w/ Angioplasties and Stents. For a long time I have wondered why couldn't we have a test that could determine if an artery in the heart was becoming clogged w/o opening the patient up. Several years ago, one of the doctors who had no cardiac markers of any cardiac problems decided to spend $400 & get a full body check up. It included a CT scan of the heart that showed calcium deposits and the doctor ended up w/ a 3 way bypass. If he hadn't taken that little test he would of dropped dead and no one could of helped him It is a shame what large medical corporations are doing just so they can get a few more bucks. The only place I know that does them is in the large hospital University of Fla. Hospital in Jacksonville because so many of their patients do not have any money so it is more cost effective to scan their heart than spend $100,000 for open heart surgery. This movie is not going to overload the viewer w/ too much technical jargon or confuse them but you will leave angry after seeing the waste that is being done in the name of medicine. Currently you will be able to get a Cardiac CT Scan that will check you for heart disease for about $500 which is a hell of a lot cheaper and the safety risks are much smaller than having a Cardiac Cath which runs from $2,500 to $15,000. And the CT of the Chest isn't covered w/ insurance but there is not a chance of having to stay overnight in the hospital either. Rated 5 out of 5 stars 02/07/23 Full Review Audience Member I'll be getting one of the calcium scans soon, covered or not. A pretty good documentary, much better than I was expecting. Rated 4 out of 5 stars 02/21/23 Full Review Audience Member This film misses the point until the end. The Calcium Scan is not equivalent to a heart cath with stent placement. The stent is to open blockages and is normally done in an urgent or emergent situation. The calcium scan is to help determine who is at risk, similar to a treadmill or pharmacologic stress test. The issue is really that there is more money in "putting out fires" than there is in preventing fires to begin with. There should be more Smokey Bear in American medicine. Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars 01/13/23 Full Review Audience Member The audio of 911 calls made by the loved ones of heart attack victims featured in this film are chilling. It's infuriating to realize medical and insurance industries favored stents over heart scans (i.e., "calcium coronary scans") for years--they denied the latter coverage--even though the stents cost tens of thousands of dollars, while the scans a few hundred. If your over 45, you should get scanned. You'll know your risk factors more precisely than by conventional tests like EKGs and stress tests and may be avoid the all-to-common tragedy of a sudden death by heart attack. Rated 4 out of 5 stars 02/17/23 Full Review Audience Member The film-making itself is fine. The science is terrible. I am a cardiologist, and the movie misses the whole point! It keeps trying to compare coronary calcium scores with stenting, when the 2 are totally different things. The CCS (calcium score) is a screening test. A stent is an intervention, which can potenitally be undertaken if a screening is abnormal. If the movie wishes to compare Cor calcium with stress testing, that would be one thing. But the movie constantly tries to pin stenting against cor calcium, which makes no sense. What the Dr from Clev Clinic says is CORRECT: The calcium score can tell us who is at risk. It doesn't tell us what to DO with that knowledge. Perhaps a high cor calcium leads to a cath. OK. Then what? If the pt has diffuse disease without isolated hemodynamically significant lesions, what then? Do you treat all of the blockages? No way! Of course not. That would create far more problems that it would solve, and anyone would agree with that. But that pt's calcium score would be high anyways. I would be in favor of using the calcium scans instead of stress testing if that is what is preferred, but the documentary is wrong in its presentation of the scan and score as anything but a simple screening. The question really is: Once we know the pt is high risk, what then? We can do a cath, sure, but without a focal lesion to treat, what then? What do we do with that information? We know ischemia, as would show up on stress testing, is a risk factor for cardiac arrest, so treating that would make sense. But coronary calcium score can't detect ischemia, so it will lead to far MORE heart caths and potentially far more stents that carry their own risks. Dangerous. The test itself may be cheaper, but the tests it will lead to will not be. Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars 02/27/23 Full Review Read all reviews Post a rating

      Cast & Crew

      Show Less Cast & Crew Show More Cast & Crew

      More Like This

      View All Best Movies to Stream at Home
      80% 84% Fed Up 92% 93% Intent to Destroy TRAILER for Intent to Destroy 100% 60% National Bird TRAILER for National Bird 89% 77% Pink Ribbons, Inc. 94% 85% The House I Live In Discover more movies and TV shows. View More

      Photos

      View All The Widowmaker photos

      The Widowmaker

      The Widowmaker (2015) The Widowmaker (2015) The Widowmaker (2015) The Widowmaker (2015) The Widowmaker (2015) The Widowmaker (2015) View more photos

      Critics Reviews

      View All (7) Critics Reviews
      Sheila O'Malley RogerEbert.com It does what good documentaries should do: it shines a very focused light on a very specific problem, a problem that affects millions of people and their families. Rated: 3/4 Feb 27, 2015 Full Review Neil Genzlinger New York Times "The Widowmaker" is commendable in that although it is a work of advocacy, it gives an array of opinions. Feb 26, 2015 Full Review Sheri Linden Los Angeles Times A lucid and important work of advocacy journalism. It illuminates yet another way that mainstream medicine thrives on crisis rather than health. Feb 26, 2015 Full Review Kenneth R. Morefield Christianity Today Over six hundred thousand Americans die of heart attacks each year, more than from all forms of cancer combined. Rated: 3/4 Mar 4, 2015 Full Review Avi Offer NYC Movie Guru Eye-opening, vital and refreshingly well-balanced. It will change the way you look at heart attacks forever. Rated: 8.75/10 Feb 26, 2015 Full Review Roger Moore Tribune News Service Sobering account of Big Money/Big Medicine and their role in how we treat and mistreat heart disease. Rated: 3/4 Feb 24, 2015 Full Review Read all reviews

      Movie Info

      Synopsis Filmmaker Patrick Forbes investigates whether a hidden battle fought inside America's medical establishment may be needlessly condemning certain heart-attack victims to death.
      Director
      Patrick Forbes
      Executive Producer
      Mark Bentley
      Screenwriter
      Patrick Forbes
      Genre
      Documentary
      Original Language
      English
      Release Date (Streaming)
      May 2, 2016