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Throughout a profession of 16 years that spanned quite a few East Coast hospitals because the late ‘80s, real-life nurse Charles Cullen confessed to murdering at the very least 29 sufferers with a deadly cocktail of medication he dripped into his victims’ bloodstream. That determine was solely his confirmed physique rely, nonetheless. As a title card suggests on the finish of Tobias Lindholm’s shrewd and absorbing drama “The Good Nurse” — a Netflix authentic that simply premiered at Toronto — the actual variety of his victims was predicted to be as excessive as a blood-curdling 400.
Hopping from one job to the following, the serial killer went undetected by the authorities, along with his connection to the weird deaths remaining as an open-secret suspicion at each facility he labored at. As a way to keep away from authorized ramifications, not one of the hospitals reported him — they only made him another person’s drawback, because the story of any corrupt establishment goes.
The fruits of this unprecedented crime and tragedy is the topic of Charles Graeber’s 2013 e-book “The Good Nurse: A True Story of Drugs, Insanity and Homicide,” which screenwriter Krysty Wilson-Cairns (“1917,” “Final Evening in Soho”) deftly adapts for the display screen with a taut construction and an empathetic eye in her first solo effort. Cullen’s story is so surprising and scandalous that it may simply have change into a trite white-knuckle thriller in lesser fingers or a median season of a true-crime podcast like “Dr. Dying.”
However Wilson-Cairns and Lindholm, the director of the elegantly restrained Danish movies “A Battle” and “A Hijacking,” fortunately reveal early on that they’ve little curiosity in sensationalist run-of-the-mill elaborations. As a substitute they preserve a grounded give attention to the immense shortcomings of the American healthcare system as a privatized and for-profit enterprise with little regard for affected person well-being. That selection pays off enormously in the long run, with a memorable and emotionally advanced political parting be aware.
Working in new terrain for him, Eddie Redmayne performs Cullen, darkening his model of amiable bashfulness with unsettling particulars. Whereas the movie’s transient, 1996-set opening sequence is all about him, as he watches the dying of a affected person in cardiac arrest with chilling indifference, Wilson-Cairns neatly constructs the remainder of the story from the perspective of one other caregiver. After this unnerving intro, we bounce to 2003 to a modest New Jersey hospital, the place Amy Loughren (Jessica Chastain, understated but arresting) works as a kind-hearted nurse.
“The Good Nurse” swiftly spells out her ethical traits in economical introductory scenes. For starters, we study that Amy is a sacrificing single mom of two in addition to a real nurturer at work, one who secretly lets her sufferers’ family members keep in a single day (“I gained’t inform for those who don’t”), regardless of repeated reminders from her supervisor that occasions are powerful, belts have to be tightened they usually can’t afford to run a lodge for the kin. We additionally find out about her life-threatening coronary heart illness, requiring costly surgical procedure that Amy’s insurance coverage gained’t cowl till additional advantages kick in, in about 4 months.
It’s infuriating to witness the well being struggles of the helpless Amy, who ought to usually be first in line to obtain vital pressing care as an indispensable caregiver herself. However Amy is aware of the unfair system inside out, nicely conscious of the truth that she has to put low and hold her situation a secret (in any other case she’ll be fired), till her insurance coverage will cowl her long-term incapacity advantages. It’s maybe as a result of her exhaustion and powerlessness that Amy doesn’t hold a better eye on Charlie when he first joins her shift because the hospital’s beginner, proving to be a fast examine in addition to a sympathetic companion to the overworked nurse.
The 2 rapidly bond, with Charlie lending Amy and her children a serving to hand, respecting her secret and even nursing her with affection and stolen remedy from the hospital inventory. However when Amy’s sufferers, all drawn with humane touches, begin expiring at random beneath her nostril, she decides to companion with the police, particularly as soon as it turns into clear that the hospital would do something to keep away from legal responsibility amid rising suspicions of malpractice.
Redmayne largely delivers a believably disquieting efficiency because the reserved assassin, save for an out-of-place outburst the place he overemphasizes Charlie’s disturbed psyche. (Let’s say that if Redmayne have been to get Oscar nominated with this function, the stated showy second can be his “awards clip” — it’s that scenery-chewing.) Chastain, alternatively, is just magnetic in a low-key function, extra spectacular on the entire than her flashy, Oscar-winning efficiency in final 12 months’s “The Eyes of Tammy Faye”. Subtly projecting love, dignity and empathy, Chastain brings Amy to life as a flesh-and-blood do-gooder, particularly shining within the movie’s smaller moments as a pointy however susceptible soul who must cease her pal from inflicting additional hurt.
Elsewhere, Nnamdi Asomugha and Noah Emmerich make sturdy impressions as a pair of hard-nosed detectives out of a retro cop drama, supplementing the procedural mechanics of “The Good Nurse” in opposition to the hospital’s antagonistic swimsuit, capably portrayed by Kim Dickens.
“The Good Nurse” finally makes a complicated impression as a shifting, deeply political human curiosity story, elevated by Jody Lee Lipes’ aptly icy, claustrophobic cinematography and an eerily stylish rating by Biosphere. What lingers most about it’s a sense of selfless compassion, the sort that Amy possesses when she painfully reminds herself of the nice buried inside inexplicable evil. Watching her attempt to summon that good makes for a quietly devastating finale, one which’s totally earned by the soulful movie that precedes it.
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