• Director:
• With: Jessica Chastain, Eddie Redmayne, Noah Emmerich, Nnamdi Asomugha, Kim Dickens, David Lavine
• Duration: 2h1
• Music by: Biosphere
• Platform: Netflix
• Based upon the novel The Good Nurse by Charles Graeber
• My rating: 8/10

Synopsis:

Amy, a compassionate nurse and single mother struggling with a life-threatening heart condition, is stretched to her physical and emotional limits by the hard and demanding night shifts at the ICU. But help arrives when Charlie, a thoughtful and empathetic fellow nurse, starts at her unit. While sharing long nights at the hospital, the two develop a strong and devoted friendship, and for the first time in years, Amy truly has faith in her and her young daughters’ future. But after a series of mysterious patient deaths sets off an investigation that points to Charlie as the prime suspect, Amy is forced to risk her life and the safety of her children to uncover the truth.

Review:

Based upon the true events of serial killer Charlie Cullen who killed several people in hospitals by mixing insuline and other drugs in the saline provided to patients, and based upon the book by Charles Graeber (The Good Nurse: a true story of madness, medicine and murder)

The movie starts with a shot, slowly closing in on Eddie Redmayne’s face, in a hospital room when a patient is dying, suffering a heart attach, while doctors and nurses are doing everything they can to save that patient. Charlie Cullen (Redmayne) is standing there helpless.

That was in 1996. Next we switch to 2003, a different hospital, where we meet devoted and loving nurse Amy (Chastain) who’s taking care of her patients when suddenly she suffers from pain in her chest… She goes to see a doctor and hears she’s suffering from cardiomyopathy. A new colleague starts in her department and they hit it off immediately, becoming great friends. That colleague is Cullen.

And then patients suddenly start to die and police are put on the case, but their job is made extremely difficult when the hospital is not cooperating; even banning them from the hospital.

Seeing Redmayne and Chastain together in this movie was a treat. For Redmayne this role was something quite different than what I’d seen him in before… here he proves he can be a bad guy as well, very refreshing (and I think maybe they should give him that role more often) and I’m always a huge fan of Chastain who in my opinion is one of the best actresses currently on the scene!

This is not a feel good movie and the worst thing is it actually happened in real life (and such events are still happening- we had similar cases in elderly houses recently in Belgium where wrong usage of insuline led to deaths) so I think it’s important we always stay vigilant…