‘The Good Nurse’ Review: Jessica Chastain and Eddie Redmayne in Scary Medical Crime Drama

A true crime film whose chilling effects are produced without the stench of manipulation that often accompanies this type of film, Tobias Lindholm. good nurse See how a veteran caregiver (Jessica Chastain) realizes her new best friend at work (Eddie Redmayne) may be killing her patients.

This fact is at the forefront of discs and promotional materials, which is a shame, because a really good drama is best for those who only know the names of the stars and the director: such viewers, who can guess that “good nurse”. At stake is Redmayne, innocently embroiled in the hospital’s bureaucratic scandal, feeling the heart of the drama more than he could. Either way, the film is a guaranteed English-language debut for Lindholm, a former Thomas Vinterberg collaborator and Danish film director. War, kidnapping s R.

Amy de Chastain, a single mother, spends her time caring for others while trying to hide her own illness: she has a heart condition that causes frequent episodes of shortness of breath; Her doctor says he risks dying soon if he doesn’t have a transplant. But despite working in a hospital, he is still months away from qualifying for work insurance. Paying for his transplant is unimaginable if you can’t stay at work despite the pain and stress.

None of Amy’s co-workers realize her difficulty. But new recruit Charlie (Redmayne) does and jumps in to help. He picks up the proper medication from the hospital pharmacy and covers it when needed. As they get to know each other, she becomes a loving and supportive part of their family. Wearing comfortable cardigans over her dress, she is so attentive to her patients’ comfort and dignity that it’s hard to imagine her making a mistake, let alone intentionally causing harm.

But when one of the elderly patients on her floor dies, hospital administrators quickly close the ranks, apparently knowing they have something big to hide, even if they don’t know what it is. Seven weeks after the death, the company’s chief risk officer (wildly corporate Kim Dickens) is forced to alert the police to an unexplained event, but continues to use an internal investigation as an excuse not to tell everything she knows. Detectives were trying to find out that the body had been cremated, so even if there were suspected wrongdoings, there was no case to investigate.

Warning lights can light up for onlookers when Charlie refers to previous jobs or cities he lived in. He complains that his ex-wife won’t let him see his kids, that some nonsense at work has caused someone to make false claims about him. Redmayne breaks the news as someone who omits details just to avoid embarrassment, or out of modesty, doesn’t want to be the center of attention. But there were rumors of unexplained deaths at other hospitals where he worked.

While Lindholm notes employee camaraderie, Christy Wilson-Kearns’ screenplay (based on the book by Charles Graeber) uses procedural scenes to reveal the rottenness of these and other for-profit hospital liability reduction strategies. Because admitting his suspicions about Charlie would open the door to manslaughter and possibly more, his previous employers would simply let him go silently, never telling him why and never admitting any trouble to strangers like other potential employers. He hopped from job to job as a child abuse priest, injecting insulin and other clear drugs into IV bags to induce rapid, accidental deaths.

When Amy finally recognizes this as an opportunity, she is forced to play secret agent. With no body to search, he must find a variety of evidence, all without scaring Charlie off or letting his superiors know he’s helping investigators. Chastain usually conveys that angst silently, but some scenes make the threat to Amy’s family so clear it looks like it might unravel. For Redmayne’s part, in the end only the scenarios and circumstances force him to be a threat; It’s so even in an atmosphere of concern and camaraderie, you wonder if Charlie is somehow absorbing the knowledge of what she’s doing and allowing herself to live most of her day like the perfect nurse she seems.

After the inevitable happens and Charlie has to face the police, Redmayne eschews psycho killer clichés and expresses deep, believable pain at being forced to think about what Charlie did. There is no “we understand!” It’s a joy to be here, especially when the end credits tell us how many people he’s killed and how long he’s worked without being swayed by strong suspicions. If American moviegoers needed more reasons to hate the for-profit healthcare system, here’s one more. Underneath the corporate suite, however, healthcare professionals continue to do what they do best, like real-life Amy, the film’s true “good nurse”, who returned to work after Charlie’s arrest and stayed there.