Jessica Chastain and Eddie Redmayne, both Oscar winners, are world class actors. The true story upon which The Good Nurse is based – also great content for storytelling.
So why does the film feel intermittently flat and Redmayne’s performance so muted, his character so inscrutable, that we don’t find him interesting, menacing – I mean, we don’t know him enough to care.
After watching the film, I visited the Wikipedia page of the real guy; he was surely more dynamic than he is presented here. The dude tried to kill himself multiple times and was in and out of psychiatric care. His troubles with his ex-wife, never seen, just obliquely referred to, divorced him because she knew he was batsh*t crazy and feared for their children.
But all of that is left on the floor, as Redmayne’s character displays only flashes of creepiness, and never while at work, apart from casting his eyes downward and quietly going about things.
This is because the film wants to tell a bigger, different story than that of just a male nurse who murdered hospitalized patients over many years. It wants to illustrate that this man was allowed to move from job to job – something like nine different hospitals employed him – because management and legal staffs didn’t want to be found liable for the deeds they suspected Cullen was committing.
Jessica Chastain’s character is our way in to the story. She is sincere and caring, but also broke, uninsured, and has a serious health issue. She is literally trying to survive for 6 more months, so that she will be insured and can get surgery for her condition that could kill her at any moment.
In other words; cooperating with investigators in their search for proof that Cullen did what they all suspect, could be literally a life and death decision for her to make. And that’s the dramatic arc that is fleshed out and worth following.
Redmayne is a great actor, and he has a couple of standout scenes, but he’s almost window dressing in a Nancy Drew mystery. The detectives played by Noah Emmerich and Nnamdi Asomugha have been drawn in a way that is different from most procedurals: they are thoughtful, mostly soft spoken, and it was a pleasure to follow their thread of the narrative.
I guess in the end, I was expecting more of a murder mystery and instead got more of a film that serves as a statement against the system. Sort of like the storyline in Dope Sick, which was done better (and, to be fair, had much more screen time to develop the characters, while also giving due time to the systemic problems that lead to opioid addiction of so many people.)
It’s a full two hours, and I wasn’t bored, but I must confess some disappointment in the way the film was written.
The Good Nurse is now streaming on Netflix. 2 ½ out of 4 stars
