by guest critic Michael Clark
Even if you disagree with the bulk of the content, you have to tip your hat to the brain trust running the show over at Netflix when it comes to recognizing trends and audience preferences. The current hot commodity on Netflix (and premium cable in general) is True Crime (TC). Over the last four years, Netflix has released dozens of TC original movies and limited docuseries and, while not all of them have been big winners, practically all of them generate huge viewership and water-cooler fodder.
(Editor's note: I'm not sure if real-life crimes need a spoiler warning, but readers who want to go into the film totally blind should be aware this review discusses specific aspects of the case.)
Even if you disagree with the bulk of the content, you have to tip your hat to the brain trust running the show over at Netflix when it comes to recognizing trends and audience preferences. The current hot commodity on Netflix (and premium cable in general) is True Crime (TC). Over the last four years, Netflix has released dozens of TC original movies and limited docuseries and, while not all of them have been big winners, practically all of them generate huge viewership and water-cooler fodder.
The latest entry in the Netflix TC canon is the awards-bait dramatic thriller feature The Good Nurse, starring Oscar winners Jessica Chastain (The Eyes of Tammy Faye) and Eddie Redmayne (The Theory of Everything). Based on the novel The Good Nurse: A True Story of Medicine, Madness, and Murder by Charles Graeber, the screenplay was penned by Krysty Wilson Cairns (Penny Dreadful, 1917) and marks the English language debut of Dutch director Tobias Lindholm (who co-wrote the screenplay for Another Round).
Lindholm and cinematographer Jody Lee Lipes (Manchester by the Sea) waste no time setting up the mood. The four-minute opening title sequence set in 1996 shows nurse Charlie Cullen (Redmayne) rushing into a room where a patient’s vital signs monitoring equipment is emitting multiple rapid-fire blips, bleeps, buzzes, and dings. As other hospital staff attempts to revive the patient, Cullen half-slumps into the corner, expressionless. Lipes’ camera never strays from Cullen whose blue-gray hospital scrubs meld into the similarly painted walls. It’s as if he disappears into the woodwork.
For the duration, those same random noises are perfectly blended with the score by Geir Jenssen (professional name: Biosphere), a Norwegian electronic composer specializing in ambient house pieces. The audio track is as sterile, cold, and clinical as the visuals – a flawless atmospheric capturing of most U.S. hospitals.
Jump ahead to Parkfield Memorial Hospital in New Jersey, 2003. Graveyard shift nurse Amy Loughren (Chastain) tends to a terminal patient in the ICU with just the right amount of upbeat bedside manner. We know Amy is a rebel because she allows the patient’s husband to stay the night; to hold his wife’s hand. The next day, Amy’s penny-pinching supervisor admonishes her, citing Rules, Regulations, Rules, Liability, and, above all, Rules.
The single mother of two toddler girls, the frazzled Amy also has a heart condition and zero health insurance. As it turns out, Parkfield employees aren’t eligible for insurance until after a year of service. Go figure; a hospital can’t (won’t) provide insurance to their own employees, even though there was (and currently, is) a nationwide shortage of nurses. Amy’s supervisor informs her that a new nurse (Cullen) has just been hired to help lighten her load.
The bond between Cullen and Amy is immediate and extends to her children. He takes on an avuncular role with gusto and a level of familiarity that falls just short of intrusive. As Cullen’s presence allows Amy to relax and chill, she’s grateful he’s entered her life in a non-threatening, non-sexual manner.
In the wake of two irregular patient deaths, local detectives Danny Baldwin (former NFL player Nnamdi Asomugha) and Tim Braun (Noah Emmerich, The Truman Show, Miracle) are sent in to investigate and are immediately greeted by the stonewalling, feet-dragging hospital mouthpiece (and former nurse) Linda Garrin (Kim Dickens).
Garrin blathers on, spewing fuzzy, barely coherent corporate jargon, insisting she’ll cooperate and turns over less than three pages of documents relating to a death that happened seven weeks prior. It’s clear she and her overseers have a lot to hide, or at the least, cannot be held legally culpable for…anything. She is little more than a red tape dispenser.
Between 1988 and 2003, Cullen worked at nine Middle-Atlantic hospitals, a number, to a layperson, that seems inordinately high; especially for a professional medical trade which values and rewards longevity and job performance. You might think an industry that is designed to keep people alive would have a safety net to detect suspect behavior of employees and perhaps tag those who leave dead bodies in their wake as, I don’t know, dangerous, but that’s not the case.
Cullen – a divorcee whose rap sheet included stalking a former fellow employee and slashing the tires of their car – was a ticking time bomb by anyone’s standards. Outwardly genteel, accommodating, eager to please, and an alleged subscriber to the Hippocratic Oath, Cullen saw a soft mark and warm shoulder in Amy. He ingratiated himself into her life and knew exactly what buttons (of her and her children) to push and when in order to gain maximum blind trust; recognized calling cards of serial killers.
To their immense credit, Cairns and Lindholm take what could have easily been presented as a high-strung, overwrought, movie-of-the-week and instead turned it into an emotionally-checked police procedural and, dare I state, morality play.
In 2004, Cullen pleaded guilty to murdering 13 people. In 2006 he was sentenced to serve 11 consecutive life sentences, yet has been connected in some form or fashion to killing upwards of over 400 people – which would make him the most prolific serial killer in American history. According to wikipedia.com, Cullen will be eligible for parole in the year 2388. In the end credits of this film, the year is stated to be 2403, which is still about 10 million years too short.
What The Good Nurse underscores is the failing of a health care system which seems to value the confidentiality of their employees who choose to kill people for whatever reason they deem fit over the souls trusting them with their very lives.
This is truly twisted, remarkably incomprehensible stuff.
Some guy with a God complex can pass judgment on people living on life’s edge and that’s not even the worst aspect of the story.
What we have are hospitals passing the buck without acknowledging that their employees are committing heinous acts without consequence or accountability and counting on not being caught in the act.
What in the blue blazes is going on here?
Grade: B+
Lindholm and cinematographer Jody Lee Lipes (Manchester by the Sea) waste no time setting up the mood. The four-minute opening title sequence set in 1996 shows nurse Charlie Cullen (Redmayne) rushing into a room where a patient’s vital signs monitoring equipment is emitting multiple rapid-fire blips, bleeps, buzzes, and dings. As other hospital staff attempts to revive the patient, Cullen half-slumps into the corner, expressionless. Lipes’ camera never strays from Cullen whose blue-gray hospital scrubs meld into the similarly painted walls. It’s as if he disappears into the woodwork.
For the duration, those same random noises are perfectly blended with the score by Geir Jenssen (professional name: Biosphere), a Norwegian electronic composer specializing in ambient house pieces. The audio track is as sterile, cold, and clinical as the visuals – a flawless atmospheric capturing of most U.S. hospitals.
Jump ahead to Parkfield Memorial Hospital in New Jersey, 2003. Graveyard shift nurse Amy Loughren (Chastain) tends to a terminal patient in the ICU with just the right amount of upbeat bedside manner. We know Amy is a rebel because she allows the patient’s husband to stay the night; to hold his wife’s hand. The next day, Amy’s penny-pinching supervisor admonishes her, citing Rules, Regulations, Rules, Liability, and, above all, Rules.
The single mother of two toddler girls, the frazzled Amy also has a heart condition and zero health insurance. As it turns out, Parkfield employees aren’t eligible for insurance until after a year of service. Go figure; a hospital can’t (won’t) provide insurance to their own employees, even though there was (and currently, is) a nationwide shortage of nurses. Amy’s supervisor informs her that a new nurse (Cullen) has just been hired to help lighten her load.
The bond between Cullen and Amy is immediate and extends to her children. He takes on an avuncular role with gusto and a level of familiarity that falls just short of intrusive. As Cullen’s presence allows Amy to relax and chill, she’s grateful he’s entered her life in a non-threatening, non-sexual manner.
In the wake of two irregular patient deaths, local detectives Danny Baldwin (former NFL player Nnamdi Asomugha) and Tim Braun (Noah Emmerich, The Truman Show, Miracle) are sent in to investigate and are immediately greeted by the stonewalling, feet-dragging hospital mouthpiece (and former nurse) Linda Garrin (Kim Dickens).
Garrin blathers on, spewing fuzzy, barely coherent corporate jargon, insisting she’ll cooperate and turns over less than three pages of documents relating to a death that happened seven weeks prior. It’s clear she and her overseers have a lot to hide, or at the least, cannot be held legally culpable for…anything. She is little more than a red tape dispenser.
Between 1988 and 2003, Cullen worked at nine Middle-Atlantic hospitals, a number, to a layperson, that seems inordinately high; especially for a professional medical trade which values and rewards longevity and job performance. You might think an industry that is designed to keep people alive would have a safety net to detect suspect behavior of employees and perhaps tag those who leave dead bodies in their wake as, I don’t know, dangerous, but that’s not the case.
Cullen – a divorcee whose rap sheet included stalking a former fellow employee and slashing the tires of their car – was a ticking time bomb by anyone’s standards. Outwardly genteel, accommodating, eager to please, and an alleged subscriber to the Hippocratic Oath, Cullen saw a soft mark and warm shoulder in Amy. He ingratiated himself into her life and knew exactly what buttons (of her and her children) to push and when in order to gain maximum blind trust; recognized calling cards of serial killers.
To their immense credit, Cairns and Lindholm take what could have easily been presented as a high-strung, overwrought, movie-of-the-week and instead turned it into an emotionally-checked police procedural and, dare I state, morality play.
In 2004, Cullen pleaded guilty to murdering 13 people. In 2006 he was sentenced to serve 11 consecutive life sentences, yet has been connected in some form or fashion to killing upwards of over 400 people – which would make him the most prolific serial killer in American history. According to wikipedia.com, Cullen will be eligible for parole in the year 2388. In the end credits of this film, the year is stated to be 2403, which is still about 10 million years too short.
What The Good Nurse underscores is the failing of a health care system which seems to value the confidentiality of their employees who choose to kill people for whatever reason they deem fit over the souls trusting them with their very lives.
This is truly twisted, remarkably incomprehensible stuff.
Some guy with a God complex can pass judgment on people living on life’s edge and that’s not even the worst aspect of the story.
What we have are hospitals passing the buck without acknowledging that their employees are committing heinous acts without consequence or accountability and counting on not being caught in the act.
What in the blue blazes is going on here?
Grade: B+
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