All you have to do is ask anyone on the organ donor list right now what he or she would do and how far he or she would go to get the transplant they so desperately need to live.

This is the question John Q. Archibald (Denzel Washington) is forced to answer in John Q.

After Archibald's son Michael collapses on his Little League field after church, Archibald learns his son will need a heart transplant to live.

For Archibald and his wife, the choice seems simple. Michael will have to get the heart transplant if it's the only way for him to live.

And then reality sets in.

The insurance the Archibalds have won't cover the surgery. They are told Michael's name can't even be put on the organ donor list until the hospital has a $75,000 down payment.

And for the Archibalds, that money just isn't available. John's hours at the factory where he works have been cut to 20 hours per week, and the family car has been repossessed by the bank because the Archibalds don't have the money to pay their bills.

It's a story about being pushed to the brink with no options left.

It's a story about how far you would go for the people you love the most.

It's a story that could become reality for any one of us and does daily around this country. That's what makes John Q. so believable, so heart wrenching, and so frustrating at the same time.

Eighty thousand people need transplants each year in America, but only a little over 20,000 get them. Part of that is a money issue, like what the Archibalds face in the movie.

The other is that there just aren't enough people donating their organs after they die. John Q. takes on this issue as well, although it isn't as prominent as the movie's attack on the health care system in America.

Archibald is forced to try and raise the money on his own after his insurance company tells him it will only cover $20,000 of the cost of the surgery.

The family sells most of their belongings and accepts donations from their friends and their church, but they still come up short.

Left with what he sees as no other option, Archibald takes matters into his own hands.

He goes to the hospital and kidnaps the doctor in charge of his son's case at gunpoint.

He takes him to the emergency room where he holds the doctor and the rest of the innocent bystanders hostage until it is agreed that his son's name be put on the organ donor list.

The movie is a 112-minute political statement about health care in America and what it means for the average man. It makes you question your own health coverage and what exactly doctors will and won't do for those of us who don't have the "optimum" insurance.

It's more than just a movie. It's more than just finding out whether Michael Archibald lives or dies.

It's a statement to the American public. Something needs to be done about the health care system in America and it's up to us to change it.

At the end of the movie, while Archibald is on his way into the courtroom to stand trial for the "crimes" he committed by kidnapping the people at the hospital, Politically Incorrect's Bill Maher can be heard in the background saying, "We are the ones who shot down health care. We are the ones who don't want our taxes raised. You have to look in the mirror at this point."

And maybe he's right. John Q. asks us to take a look inside ourselves to see how much of what is happening is our own fault.

It asks us to look at how we can change things in the long run through legislation or by doing something simple like becoming organ donors.

It asks us how we can make a difference in the lives of others. Not a bad message, don't you think?

I've got my organ donor card ... do you?