My expectations were fairly tamed down when I entered the Princess of Wales theater at TIFF for Tobias Lindholm’s “The Good Nurse,” and know what? It turns out the film is meticulously made, with controlled framing and pacing that reminds you of Fincher.
Don’t let the title mislead you, this is the story of real-life serial killer Charlie Cullen (Eddie Redmayne), the “good” nurse of the title. Cullen, was known as the “Angel of Death,” and regarded as one of the most prolific murderers in modern American history. He was allegedly responsible for the deaths of almost 300 of his patients over a 15-year time span. Jessica Chastain plays Cullen’s co-worker at the hospital, and fellow nurse, who started to suspect Cullen’s nefarious ways.
Lindholm worked with Fincher on the “Mindhunter” series so it’s not surprising he took some of the chops he learned from that show and brought them in for “The Good Nurse.” The film is almost clinical in its every shot selection and lingering camera movement. He’s aided by Jody Lee Lipes’ icy cinematography. Biosphere’s tech-infused score is also a welcome and refreshing addition to the surroundings.
Redmayne plays Cullen with an eerie gentleness, finding the tics and soft-spoken nature of his character to build up a fully fleshed psychopath. And yet, I’m still not convinced he’s a great actor. There’s a certain strenuousness to his delivery that makes the film more hammy than it should have been. Then again, the way his role has been underwritten here, you could also make the case that Redmayne is constrained by the lack of nuance his character gets in Krysty Wilson-Cairns’ screenplay.
Whereas, Chastain, playing a character with a serious heart condition who can’t take time off work due to an insurance policy only kicking in three months, is sublime. She finds the fear, but also the heroism to make her Amy work. It’s another addition to Chastain’s vast filmography of strongly independent female roles.
For all the solid acting and spot-on tech work, this is still a film that holds back a bit and refuses to embrace its grisly genre tropes. The film, although somewhat predictably written, is the kind of true crime drama that Netflix audiences might eat up when it becomes available to stream later this month on Netflix. [B]