On B List of Movie Reviews

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Breast Men (1997)

Rate: 8
Viewed: 10/25

10/25: I saw Breast Men on HBO back then and had never forgotten it.

It's a well-made movie about the breast implants industry. Sure, different breasts are shown many times over, but the filmmakers have done a good job of telling the story from a medical point of view. The movie mentions the switch to saline-filled implants for safety reasons, but they contain traces of silicone (the ban was lifted in 2006 for silicone-gel breasts implants) and heavy metals.

I've wondered many times what the average shelf life is for breast implants and whether or not they're sustainable in the long run. It turns out that there's no such thing as a safe breast implant. Even the FDA website says: "Breast implants are not considered lifetime devices. The longer people have them, the greater the chances are that they will develop complications." They're also guaranteed of constant MRI scans and additional surgeries with a replacement or removal happening every ten years on average.

The list of complications is extensive. It's not pretty and can include death. As a matter of fact, women start dying slowly because there's a foreign object inside their bodies that's leaking microscopically and the immune system has been triggered to start repelling it. To my knowledge, there's no reliable national tracking of outcomes for breast implants. Whatever the numbers are, it's most definitely underreported by at least 20x.

Back to Breast Men, there's a big difference between David Schwimmer and Chris Cooper in terms of acting. That's why one belongs in TV and the other in movies. If not for the latter, it would probably be hard to establish credibility. By the way, the doctors they play have been made up, hence the disclaimer: "The following is basically a true story, slightly augmented."

All in all, Breast Men is honest by presenting both sides of the breast implant phenomenon.

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