The Good Nurse- spoilers

Cafe Society
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1

I saw this last night on Netflix. I’m not sure if there was a theatrical release.

It’s the story of possibly the most prolific serial killer in history. It’s not told through his eyes but through the nurse that helped bring him down. Generally I found it to be excellent. Jessica Chastain does a very good job as the lead. Eddie Redmayne gives possibly his best performance. It probably won’t get any awards because except for one brief scene it’s a very subtle performance. His speech, his gait, his posture are all completely realistic but also totally different than Eddie in real life.

For a movie based on real life it does a pretty decent job of portraying the important parts of the story. The parts it changes don’t matter too much unless you are looking for it. They use fictional names for all the hospitals. Not surprising since they are shown to be the villains. They also don’t mention the lawsuits. I am surprised in the postscript they don’t mention how this led to passing of the Patient Safety Act in NJ with many states following. I was tuned into the hospital names because I’ve been treated in 3 of the places he worked at. My girls were both born in the hospital he was finally caught at. My sister was a nodding acquaintance to Cullen from working at one of those hospitals but on a different ward.

His arrest was laughable to me but probably won’t seem wrong to most. The interrogation also didn’t happen like that. But it’s a movie. They got the essence right.

Unfortunately filmmakers are not adjusting to the home viewing reality. They have to learn you can’t shoot a movie expecting a movie theater experience. I noticed the movie’s palette was washed out. There were several scenes that were unnecessarily dark. It wouldn’t matter if you watch it in a theater. If you are home watch in a dark room on a good TV. I watched at night and it was fine. If I had waited until today because it’s my day off I might have issues.

2

I watched it last night and enjoyed it. I didn’t realize that Jessica Chastain was the girl from Zero Dark 30 until I looked her up, quite a change in character.

And yes, the scenes were overly dark. In my experience nurses stations and the areas around them are incredibly well light. It must have been a decision by the director to convey the dark nature of his crimes by darkening up the scenes. Only the conference rooms were bright, where some of the darkest shit the hospital pulled occurred.

The guy was really creepy at times, but mostly he held it back to show shyness and awkwardness. Scary.

3

That’s one of the reasons why they changed the names of the hospital. I think they gave them a bad rap. The hospital shown was the only one he worked at that did anything and did get the investigation started. All the other places he worked swept it under the rug. I do have to check out the book this was based on. It’s non-fiction and goes into much greater detail than you get from wiki.