With the likes of Eddie Redmayne, Jessica Chastain, and directed by the Danish fella who wrote 2012’s The Hunt, Tobias Lindholm, what’s not to like going into this movie? The Good Nurse is also based on a true story, and while I’m yet to get to Evan Peter’s depiction of Jeffery Dahmer that everyone’s been raving about, I’m jonesing for some true-crime horror of my own.
When new nurse Charlie Cullen (Eddie Redmayne) starts at Parkfield Hospital, Any Loughren (Jessica Chastain) takes him under her wing. They hit it off right away, and Charlie is courteous in assisting with her patients, and helps to keep an ailing medical condition of Amy’s under wraps until she can qualify for health care. But a patient dies, and the hospital is obligated to notify the police of unexplainable suspicious circumstances. Homicide detectives, Danny Baldwin (Nnamdi Asomugha) and Tim Braun (Noah Emmerich), investigate, and while the hospital proves uncooperative, Amy is dragged into the caper as evidence starts to point towards a sinister pattern enacted by Charlie.
This movie is so incredibly sad. I should’ve seen it coming, I should’ve seen it coming, as The Hunt is harrowing in its own way too. From the movie’s first moment, when we see the shot of a patient’s legs waggling through a code, I knew I was in for a rough one, and oh my God, I was tearing up in the first act, and then again in the second act – basically, any time our patients were dying. The movie tells us that the hospital is underfunded, people are losing their loved ones, and the good nurse, Amy, has a ticking timebomb in her chest that threatens to leave her young children alone. Perhaps I’m just a big softie, but I think it’s appropriate to feel sad, under this movie’s circumstances 😥 And duly, I was invested in this movie’s stakes. This might be my favourite Chastain role I can recall actually, as much of this movie’s outcome relies on her character’s resourcefulness, and chances taken, as she weaves in and out of many complications firing on all cylinders. As the McDonald brothers say in The Founder, these hospitals have let a ‘wolf in the hen house’, allowing Charlie to bounce around in protecting their bottom line. After Spotlight, a favourite movie of mine, renowned for depicting the scale of the real-world church corruption, there are times when the plight of The Good Nurse can feel like… ‘it’s just a couple of hospitals’ by comparison – how many times can we see these trusted institutions rotting from the inside? I can barely take it anymore! In reality, this story is just as vile – hospitals, institutions people rely on at their most vulnerable, and a maniacal practitioner is being shuffled around to avoid lawsuits and payouts – reprehensible. Funnily, Dark Waters has a scene where the shady company under investigation sends all the boxes to lawyers, hoping to swamp them under a mountain of paperwork – this hospital takes the other route, sending the police only six sheets of paper that tell them nothing about the case: equally snobbish, but on the opposite end of the scale. But my family and I have just finished the final season of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and although I could moan about it being prickly and preachy, Captain Holt does have a point when he says if you don’t follow the rules when one of your own is at breach, then it ruins perception, puts institutions at opposition with the public, and fosters future complications. It’s a simple philosophy that should be so fucking obvious. And it’s applicable here; to hospitals, churches, the NYPD and more. For goodness’ sake.
It’s a shame that Jessica Chastain and Eddie Redmayne are working together and not playing brother and sister – would there be a more believable duo? 🤣 But their friendship in this movie is really sweet, and they share great chemistry in limited scenes together – it’s a real treat to watch. Chastain is so great at playing a stressed-out A-type, ey? This time, she’s rattling off medical mumbo-jumbo like she’s been doing it her whole life. Maybe I’m still trying to make up ground for not acknowledging her in my Slice Awards at the beginning of the year, or maybe she’s just a damn fine actress and I’m allowed to say it 👍 Eddie Redmayne is impressive, especially in early scenes, transforming into this quiet unassuming nurse very well. I remember he played a villain before in Jupiter Ascending, but this is a psychopath, and I tip my hat to his widening versatility. If not for the ominous music in the very beginning, it would be hard to even suspect this guy is up to something, other than maybe noticing how strange it is that he’s never agitated by the horrible things he’s telling Amy that his ex-wife has done to him, to keep his daughters from him – in hindsight it’s probably clear that he’s got some secret way of alleviating stress, and it just so happens to be evil. Finally, Kim Dickens is a presence I always look forward to seeing ever since Gone Girl, and as usual, I gravitate towards characters that are good at their jobs, so the coppers, Nnamdi Asomugha and Noah Emmerich, are ticks for me too. It’s nice to see Emmerich playing a good guy when he usually gets assholes and charlatans.
While the plotting and performances can be terrific, The Good Nurse does have some qualities that I hate. The colour saturation is completely off, and makes this film look very ugly. I once caught an episode of that TV show on nurses, Getting On, that portrays hospital life as similarly drab, and it’s definitely more realistic than the vibrant colours of Scrubs! … But there’s much middle ground. I’ve been to hospitals that aren’t so dark, and you’ve got to think about the visuals of a movie that make it worth watching. Compounding this, is some objectional shot selection, most notedly in the diner scene where a third of the frame is blacked out while Charlie decides how he will react… Perhaps it’s supposed to be stylistic, but I think it might be drawing away from the moment, in a story that’s already compelling. Also, when Amy is running up the stairs to investigate the IV bags I was literally shouting at the screen! ‘You can’t stop the killer if you’re dead! With your heart condition, why are you running?!’ But I expect the resulting scene, that has Amy is in a hospital bed with Charlie attempting to care for her, was a jewel in the crown for the project, even from preproduction, so showing Amy stress her heart by being silly was merely a means to an end.
So, I didn’t necessarily believe everything depicted in this movie, but I believed enough to be horrified by the story, revolted by the institutional corruption, and invested in the outcome. As sad as I was at the beginning of the movie, this movie ended up making me mad, so I’m mad and sad. The Good Nurse is in the same league as the type of exposé movies I adore, like Spotlight and Dark Waters, and I will probably reference it in reviews going forward. It’s one of those movies I should investigate for myself to see where the truth lies, and where dramatic liberties have been taken, before I get overly… huffy. But not now; right now, I need something fun to cleanse my palate.
3.5
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