Even after the British nurse Lucy Letby was sentenced to life in prison*, the local media haven’t stopped talking about her, speculating about the motives and the grisly details of her crimes (those that were proven definitively; the investigation is continuing, as there might be more victims out there). Of course, media are what media do, but the actual phenomenon of a medical worker who, tasked with overseeing the life and health of the patients, harms them instead, isn’t new: the names of Harold Shipman, Beverly Allitt and Niels Högel quickly come to mind.
And so does the name of Charles Cullen, a male nurse from New Jersey, who, according to Wiki, “murdered dozens—possibly hundreds—of patients during a 16-year career spanning several New Jersey medical centres until being arrested in 2003.” The film “The Good Nurse” (2022; directed by Tobias Lindholm and written by Krysty Wilson-Cairns), which is currently streaming on Netflix, shows the last few months of Cullen’s crimes committed in the ICU at Parkfield Memorial Hospital before he was apprehended by the NJ police with the help of his colleague and friend at the time, another nurse, Amy Loughren.
I have always had certain issues with crime trillers/criminal dramas when they are called biographical: to what extent do the filmmakers tamper with the narration in order to make it visually more exciting? We don’t know, of course: in cases, when it’s done poorly, the feedback from the characters’ prototypes can be quite harsh, and rightfully so. But when it follows the main string of events in the most genuine way possible, you as a viewer can mistake smoothness for falseness, and, I guess, it’s a catch-22 for both parties (meaning the creators and the spectators) involved.
Taking everything above into account, I’d say that “The Good Nurse” feels and looks more or less balanced, thanks to the duo of two excellent actors, Jessica Chastain (Amy) and Eddie Redmayne (Cullen). Chastain’s portrayal of a young woman trapped in circumstances that can only be described as unbearable (her character is on the verge of precarity and is enduring severe pain due to a heart condition that cannot be treated immediately, as she hasn’t earned her health insurance yet, one of those horrors that we all, sadly, hear way too often), is exceptionally great. When she gets unexpected help from her new colleague, the audience can relate to her relief, which then develops into a nerve-wracking suspicion and then a certainty that everything in her unit is wrong, and the person who’s in charge of all this is none other than her new friend, with whom she had developed such a great emotional bond (or so did she thought she did).
Redmayne’s version of Cullen is subtle, self-absorbed and, most importantly, unpredictable: he portrays a closeted psychopath with that threatening aura that can be so easily mistaken in real life for some casual uneasiness, which is normal for people in distress who’ve ended up in hospital. But Cullen’s delusions of grandeur become more and more apparent the more we learn about his callousness through Amy’s gaze (it is her version of events that we see unfolding in the film), culminating in his last dialogue with Amy in jail, when he finally confesses—plainly and blankly. It was done brilliantly — masterfully — without any hysterical bombast.
And, of course, my usual interest in the accents has also been satisfied: it was amusing to see a posh Brit playing another American from the East Coast, and he did it well, in my opinion, but what would I know as a non-native, after all.
So, to summarise: 8 out of 10 (it got a bit scrambled in the end) and perhaps one of the best things on Netflix right now. Highly recommended.
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* Letby is currently serving 14 consecutive life sentences, which is the harshest punishment in modern UK history; even Myra Hindley and Rose West, the most infamous female serial killers of the 20th century, were sentenced to the ONE whole life tariff, albeit without possibility of parole, hence Letby’s conviction reflects the notoriety of her crimes even in comparison with those two.
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