YMMV / Extreme Measures

• Harsher in Hindsight: Myrick is right, up to a certain point — his main complaint is bureaucracy getting in the way of medical research and the leading researchers are not getting any younger. The movie was released back in 1996 and it wasn't till 2010 that scientists had success regrowing spines on mice.
• Nightmare Fuel: Plenty. Don't watch the subway scenes if you're claustrophobic. And that whole sequence, which inevitably ends with someone being run over a train is probably one of the deepest fears of any city dweller. Then there's the bit where Guy is trapped in the hospital told that he's paralyzed from the neck down. It's already a terrifying prospect, even more so when he learns that he's NOT paralyzed (his condition is simulated via powerful drugs) and isn't in a real hospital. To think that someone could have the knowledge to do that to someone—and then actually do it. . . Not to mention of course the idea that homeless men are picked up off from hospitals to be used unwilling in deadly medical experiments, basically a horrible urban legend.
• Tear Jerker: When the secretary starts bawling upon seeing that Dr. Myrick has been shot. The woman has been paralyzed for 12 years and for all she knows, she's seeing her only hope at walking again fade away right in front of her.