The Good Nurse

Eddie Redmayne wäre ein großartiger junger Hannibal Lecter. Er ist in der Lage, sowohl weinende Märtyrer als auch beunruhigende Verrückte zu spielen. Der Film ist aber durchschnittlich. Das Thema fand ich interessant. Im Hinblick darauf, dass es sich um einen Spielfilm handelt, ist seine dramatische Gestaltung jedoch mangelhaft. The Good Nurse wirkt unheimlich, weil er auf wahren Begebenheiten beruht. Der düstere Ton und das sterile Krankenhaus funktionieren gut. Die Lösung des Problems durch Jessica Chastain ergreift das Publikum aber nicht. Da wäre eine andere, tiefere Psychologie zwischen ihr und Redmayne nötig gewesen. (19.01.2023)

Your life is in their hands. Tobias Lindholm is a solid Swedish director, I like his films a lot (especially R and The Hunt – I recommend catching up if you haven't seen it), but this time he picked a weaker moment, maybe because his Nordic signature is missing here and he made the film for Netflix. The premise itself could have been conceived in a much more chilling and unpleasant way, as this serial killer has more victims than Dahmer and Bundy combined, but since he killed without touching the victims, it doesn't look very appealing on the screen. The film centers on the likeable Jessica Chastain (unusual to see her blonde) who is a devoted mom and nurse, and rightfully has the nickname Good Nurse. She gets a new colleague on the ward, Eddie Redmayne, with whom she gets on well enough at first, but as patients start dying mysteriously, she begins to grow suspicious of their relationship and slowly begins to drift apart. The criminal investigation is presented in a relatively interesting way and this is one of the brighter moments of the film. Jessica works with the cops as they try to find a hole in a pretty intelligent crime. The film stands mostly on the performances of the two leads and has a chilling epilogue, and that's pretty much unfortunately. It's very monotonously shot (the visuals are strangely grey throughout), nothing exciting or thrilling happens, I found it emotionally cold, we know how it's going to turn out so we don't get a twist and it's also pretty much uninteresting. It could have had more balls for being a true story, but despite these flaws, it's watchable and I didn't die of downright boredom, so it passes for pure average. 5.5/10. (30.10.2022)

Czech TV came out with Suspicion, Netflix with The Good Nurse, who unfortunately runs into a bad one. As an artist, Tobias Lindholm remains little more than a hint in the background, and even so his personal contribution is rather limited compared to his previous work. The atmosphere is oppressive in places, but not sufficiently, and by the last act it's downright dull. The most interesting storyline is the one with the systemic failure of the hospital apparatus and Jessica Chastain is great as always, yet I would have expected much more from such a subject (and from Tobias Lindholm doubly so). As a result, it's just a slightly better piece of consumer Netflix material, which is woefully inadequate for such an ambitious undertaking. [55%] (10.11.2022)

As a viewer I feel a bit of subjective disillusionment that I didn't learn why the psycho was doing it. But so be it, they don't really know, so it probably wouldn't be appropriate for the filmmakers to make up their own psychological backstory based on actual events. Objectively, however, exposing the systemic flaw that allowed the psycho to do what he did is at least as interesting. It was nice to see Jessica Chastain in a good movie again, and Eddie Redmayne in a role that didn't piss me off, he fits the type for these characters and should stay with them. (06.11.2022)