The Good Nurse: Quietly Brilliant True-Crime Saga Hinges on Ace Performances
By Karen Gordon
Rating: A-
Bolstered by superb performances by two Oscar-winning actors, director Tobias Lindholm’s The Good Nurse is a subdued, elegantly made true crime film about how a heinous crime spree was brought to an end.
This is not a typical sensationalist movie focused on the aberrant behaviour of a psychopath. Rather, it focuses on the straightforward moral courage of one woman against deliberate bureaucratic obfuscation, cover-ups, and systemic flaws. That woman is Amy Loughren (Jessica Chastain), a solid, empathetic ICU nurse working the nightshift, and a single mother of two little girls.
She’s also hiding a secret from her employers. Amy has a severe heart condition at such a serious point that her doctors want her to quit working while they find a suitable donor for a heart transplant. Unfortunately, Amy hasn’t been at her job for long enough to qualify for medical insurance, so she can’t quit. Her doctors caution her to avoid stress as much as possible.
When new nurse Charlie Cullen (Eddie Redmayne) joins the nightshift team, Amy is relieved to find that he’s simpatico. He’s thoughtful, kind, gentle, caring. When she’s forced to confide in him about her medical situation and her circumstances, he becomes a discreet and protective ally, a good friend who genuinely cares about her. He’s good to her kids, too.
When one of the patients on the ward dies unexpectedly, the police are called in to investigate. The detectives (Noah Emmerich and Nnamdi Asomugha) try to do their due diligence, but are puzzled by how quickly they’re stonewalled by the hospital.
They're also hamstrung by the fact that the patient was cremated, meaning they’ve hit a brick wall. There doesn’t seem to be much appetite at any level to go further, but they’re not deterred. They’ve found cracks in some of the evidence and believe they’re onto something, so they call in the ICU nurses for interviews.
Read our interviews with Jessica Chastain and Eddie Redmayne about The Good Nurse
When they show Amy what they’ve found, she begins to connect the dots in ways that rattle her. And where the hospital brass has obfuscated and lied to the officers, she steps in to provide what she can.
The Good Nurse is based on a book by Charles Graeber, and skillfully adapted for the screen by Krysty Wilson-Cairns (Oscar-nominated for 1917). The movie follows two threads: the relationship between Amy and Charlie, and the police detectives who are working the case. The film also deals with themes of bureaucratic clouding, the fear that finding fault with the system will lead to lawsuits and giant payouts, and delay tactics that cost lives.
But The Good Nurse is really about Amy. Chastain plays her as a quiet, centred, woman who loves her job. It’s a beautifully calibrated, thoughtful, and unshowy performance. She is matched beautifully by Redmayne who, despite all the good work he’s already done, is a revelation as Charlie, in his darkest role to date.
The Charlie we meet and see working is a good guy, an undemanding solid friend to Amy, who really needs the support. But there is a monster living in him. It takes time before we see him, and then we only see him briefly. But in Redmayne’s hands it is absolutely chilling.
Director Lindholm is part of a current wave of Danish writers and directors who specialize in layered movies about complicated relationships. He’s frequently collaborating with acclaimed director Thomas Vinterberg, writing screenplays for the Oscar-winning Another Round and the Oscar-nominated The Hunt, movies that avoid melodrama and sensationalism and feel natural and emotionally honest.
In that tradition, Lindholm has made The Good Nurse as quiet as a whisper. This is the opposite end of crime movies that focus on the tics and horrors of a psychopath. There aren’t gigantic revelatory points, where we watch Amy wrestling with herself, and coming to peace with her decisions. Lindholm keeps the story focused and down-to-earth, skillfully pacing it so that there are slight turns, moments where we feel Amy’s rising horror.
What makes someone a monster? The film doesn’t offer answers to that, or even try to explore his psyche. Instead, The Good Nurse is a portrait of a woman with an unflagging moral compass, and in the end what we come away with is her strength, courage, and empathy.
The Good Nurse. Directed by Tobias Lindholm. Starring Jessica Chastain and Eddie Redmayne. In select theatres, October 19, and on Netflix October 26.