Direction: Tobias Lindholm
Country: USA
The thrillers of Danish director Tobias Lindholm got famous for their glows and agitation, but The Good Nurse, a harrowing true story abated by banality, doesn't hold up as well as you'd expect. Screenwriter Krysty Wilson-Cairns worked from the 2013 true crime book by Charles Graeber.
The film boasts Jessica Chastain and Eddie Redmayne in the center roles. She is Amy Loughren, a proficient if tired nurse and single mother of two, who has been struggling with cardiomyopathy crisis. He is Charlie Cullen, a self-assured and helpful nurse who worked in nine hospitals over 16 years, leaving a trace of silent death behind him. When he arrives at the ICU of Parkfield Memorial Hospital in New Jersey, it was a huge relieve for Amy, who couldn’t guess her patients would be in danger. A mysterious death leads to an investigation by two relentless detectives (played by Nnamdi Asomugha and Noah Emmerich), leaving them stuck in a web of lies, cynicism and cover-ups.
Rather than shocked or terrified, you follow the course of events fairly intrigued and sometimes amused. But this is not enough. This monotonous crime drama awkwardly and stiffly arrives at its revelations, managing little more than a gesture toward untying inextricable knots. It’s weak as a thriller and particularly disappointing following Lindholm's exceptional past work (A Hijacking, 2012; A War, 2015).
Quite simply: this is something you could read about in a few paragraphs, and the film fails to present any type of dilemma during its passionless narrative. Cullen’s character should have been better explored and details of his personal life revealed to help us gain some interest and overcome indifference.
