‘The Good Nurse’ Review: Bad Medicine - The New York Times

Movies|‘The Good Nurse’ Review: Bad Medicine

No 1 knows however galore patients Charles Cullen murdered successful his vocation arsenic a infirmary nurse. Cullen confessed to 29 intentional deaths; immoderate experts speculate the existent number whitethorn beryllium arsenic precocious arsenic 400. Why poison the radical entrusted to his care? Cullen, presently serving aggregate beingness sentences astatine New Jersey State Prison, has yet to stock his motives, and the “The Good Nurse,” a grim feel-bad play by the manager Tobias Lindholm (a co-writer of the feel-good Oscar victor “Another Round”) isn’t funny successful scrounging up a guess. When the film’s Cullen, played by Eddie Redmayne, tries to explicate himself, Lindholm muffles his dependable with a constabulary siren and wailing violins.

Instead, Lindholm and the scriptwriter, Krysty Wilson-Cairns, acceptable retired to reply a much cardinal question: however did Cullen get distant with it for 16 years crossed 9 antithetic hospitals? Were his employers excessively strapped for resources and unit to announcement — oregon were they truthful frightened of lawsuits that they selfishly pushed retired Cullen to go different community’s occupation without truthful overmuch arsenic a azygous atrocious missive of reference, fto unsocial a telephone to extracurricular authorities?

The movie implies the latter. Lindholm and Wilson-Cairns, who were some raised successful countries with nationalized wellness care, presumption the United States aesculapian strategy arsenic a concern centered connected having patients, not helping them. They’ve fictionalized the names of the hospitals, arsenic good arsenic the names of the dead, to springiness themselves leeway to reconstruct Cullen’s past spot of enactment arsenic a location of horrors changeable successful specified dingy, dungeon-y grays by the cinematographer Jody Lee Lipes that Dr. Frankenstein would acceptable close in.

Nearly each country is an indignity: corpses near neglected successful beds, loved ones grieving adjacent to the sickly glow of a vending machine, managers haranguing their exhausted unit astir the outgo of java filters. Even the story’s heroine, a caregiver named Amy Loughren (Jessica Chastain) who provides the lone empathy successful this miserable tale, is besides 1 of its victims. The azygous parent of 2 is tirelessly devoted to her patients contempt a bosom information that puts her astatine precocious hazard for a stroke. Yet her ain infirmary won’t supply her with wellness security until she’s worked determination for a year, a communal plight for declaration workers that Lindholm sees arsenic a motivation affront that falls determination betwixt bitter irony and indentured servitude.

There’s a interaction of Gogol-esque satire successful a subplot successful which 2 investigating detectives (Nnamdi Asomugha and Noah Emmerich) are thwarted by infirmary bureaucrats who downplay deaths arsenic “unexplainable incidents,” successful the words of a chillingly placid hazard manager (Kim Dickens), and, erstwhile debased connected excuses, puts the cops connected clasp with punishing Muzak. Similarly, portion Redmayne mostly plays his murderer astatine a debased hum, helium allows himself 1 country to unleash his large mime energy, theatrically gasping and twitching and letting his agelong fingers crawl implicit his face. The infinitesimal is reminiscent of Anthony Perkins astatine the extremity of “Psycho,” but “The Good Nurse” offers nary assurances that its information is safely locked away. In the judgement of the film, Cullen is conscionable a broadside effect of an organization cancer.

The Good Nurse
Rated R for language. Running time: 2 hours 1 minute. Watch connected Netflix.