The Good Nurse: An unsettling diagnosis

The Good Nurse (2022) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated R, for profanity

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang

If the American health care system doesn’t already make you nervous, watching this film will leave you hiding in a closet, whimpering like a child.

 

After Amy (Jessica Chastain) suffers a minor cardiomyopathy attack, Charlie
(Eddie Redmayne) talks her down from panic.

Because Krysty Wilson-Cairns’ screenplay — based on Charles Graeber’s meticulously researched 2013 true crime book of the same title — makes it abundantly clear that lawsuit-adverse corporate ownership of hospitals allowed perhaps the worst serial killer in history to continue unchecked for 16 years.

It can be argued — and this clearly is the point of director Tobias Lindholm’s slow-burn film — that this system is the bigger villain.

 

But such awareness arrives later. Our attention is drawn initially to Jessica Chastain’s richly nuanced, quietly compelling performance as Amy Loughren, a dedicated nurse in a large East Coast hospital. She’s the single mother of two young daughters — Maya (Devyn McDowell) and Alex (Alix West Lefler) — and works long hours during demanding ICU night shifts.

 

Amy also suffers from cardiomyopathy, a potentially fatal heart condition that manifests when her pulse rate spirals out of control. It requires surgical intervention, which she cannot yet afford; because she’s relatively new to this hospital placement, she’s still months away from the one-year vesting that’ll allow health insurance to kick in.

 

(The irony is not lost on us: a nurse, working at a hospital, who remain uninsured.)

 

Chastain’s slumped posture and frequently weary expression suggest a woman constantly battling total exhaustion. And yet Amy also radiates dignity and responsibility; she always lights up when with a patient, or comforting a family member; her ministrations are gentle, her compassion palpable. 

 

She isn’t merely a “good” nurse; she’s a great nurse. Chastain delivers one of those “all in” performances that makes her every move and spoken word compelling, and authentic. She feels like somebody living next door.

 

We meet Amy as she tends to an elderly woman with a serious skin condition: uncomfortable and debilitating, but not life-threatening. Lindholm and Wilson-Cairns take their time in establishing Amy’s routine: both during her overworked and understaffed hospital shifts, and at home, where Maya has become frustrated by her mother’s prolonged daily absences.

 

Relief finally arrives when Charlie Cullen (Eddie Redmayne) joins her unit. Amy shows him the ropes; he adapts quickly to this late-night shift’s demands. Redmayne makes him affable, observant and — most particularly — empathetic. Amy and Charlie bond during these long nights; she trusts him with her heart issues, and he becomes something of a cheerleader.

 

And also a friend, spending daytime hours with Amy and her daughters, who adore him.

 

Then the elderly woman dies, quite unexpectedly.

The Highwaymen: Old dogs on the hunt

The Highwaymen (2019) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for strong violence and bloody images
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.5.19

Some actors are inherently captivating, even when their characters are engaged in activities that aren’t otherwise cinematically interesting.

Having detected a possible pattern to Bonnie and Clyde's movements, Many Gault
(Woody Harrelson, left) and Frank Hamer (Kevin Costner) hope to be on hand,
the next time the outlaws strike.

That’s definitely true of Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson, who make an art form of quiet, contemplative brooding in director John Lee Hancock’s The Highwaymen. Both are note-perfect as — respectively — Texas Rangers Frank Hamer and Maney Gault, brought out of retirement in early 1934, in order to hunt down Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker.

John Fusco’s thoughtful, fact-based screenplay does much to undo the historical damage wrought by 1967’s pop culture-oriented Bonnie and Clyde. At the same time, Fusco slyly acknowledges the dangerous “cult of celebrity” that made the outlaws attractive to people beaten down by Depression-era poverty, who naively — stupidly — believed that two kill-crazy sociopaths were “looking out for the common folks.”

(That dynamic similarly blinds the percentage of today’s American public that continues to worship at the altar of a narcissist who repeatedly worsens their lives.)

Although Bonnie and Clyde’s increasingly violent crime spree had continued for two years — in part — due to overwhelmed small-town police departments not yet able to coordinate effectively with each other, the challenge of catching the outlaws was exacerbated by civilians disinclined to help. But that sentiment began to shift after Jan. 16, 1934, when the gang freed a quartet of inmates from Texas’ Eastham Prison Farm, shooting two guards in the process. (One died two weeks later.)

This was the last straw for Texas Gov. Miriam Amanda Wallace “Ma” Ferguson (an appropriately feisty Kathy Bates), and it’s where Hancock’s film begins. Despite opposition from Bureau of Investigation agents — soon to become the FBI — Ferguson lets her Department of Corrections chief (John Carroll Lynch, as Lee Simmons) seek out Hamer, long respected as a dedicated and dogged law enforcement officer.

Despite that, he’d been forced into retirement after Ferguson disbanded the Texas Rangers the previous year (political revenge, after the agency had backed her election opponent). We meet Hamer on a typical morning, as he putters silently around the lovely home shared with wife Gladys (Kim Dickens). We get a sense that she’s constantly busy with volunteer work, whereas Costner’s resigned, slightly aimless expression speaks volumes about a man who has lost his purpose in life.

Even so, Hamer is disinclined to accept Simmons’ request, in part due to a reluctant recognition of age-related limitations, and also by way of respecting Gladys’ legitimate fear over the assignment’s obvious dangers. The die is cast when Bonnie and Clyde are involved in another violent confrontation in Missouri.

Gone Girl: A thriller for the ages

Gone Girl (2014) • View trailer 
Five stars. Rated R, for strong violence, profanity, sexual content and nudity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.3.14

Thrillers rarely get the respect they deserve.

Oh, sure; it’s a popular genre that sells plenty of tickets, but such public approbation is viewed with suspicion and scorn, when it comes time to hand out awards. The implication is that thrillers represent empty, pop-culture calories unworthy of serious recognition. Academy Awards go to historical dramas and intimate character pieces.

Back in the day, Nick (Ben Affleck) and Amy (Rosamund Pike) enjoyed a storybook
courtship in their beloved New York City surroundings, notably the bookstores both loved
to frequent. Sadly, many relationships cannot survive a crisis ... and this one is about to
be hit by several.

Oscar hasn’t given its Best Picture prize to a thriller since 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs.

That may be about to change.

Director David Fincher’s masterful handling of Gone Girl is much, much more than an impeccable translation of its wildly popular source novel (so rest easy, readers; I’m sure you’ll be pleased). This also is a tour de force of cinematic craft: one of those rare films that ingeniously utilizes every aspect of movie-making magic.

Fincher masterminds each detail with the meticulous scrutiny of a master conductor who pays careful attention to every last instrument, even those that play but a single note during an entire symphony. This is bravura filmmaking at its finest.

Fincher wisely has surrounded himself with a talented cadre of actors, all flawlessly cast, and an equally accomplished production crew. Then, too, he has the advantage of working with novelist Gillian Flynn, a first-time screenwriter who has adapted her own book with the same cunning that turned it into a page-turning best-seller.

Even capable novelists don’t always make good screenwriters; they’re entire different sciences. Flynn, clearly, is adept at both.

And that’s what it comes down to: All the aforementioned talent would be wasted, were the core narrative not up to snuff. Flynn’s storyline is mesmerizing, and not just for its deliciously twisty — even macabre — thrillers elements. She also unerringly skewers contemporary society’s bread-and-circuses infatuation with the mindless media “talking heads” who scurry like rats from one overblown crisis to the next, passing judgment without attempting even the most basic research legwork.

Because, at the end of the day, too many of us prefer such vacuous glitter and glitz, and get a vicarious thrill out of feeling superior to the maligned victim of the moment.

This particular victim-in-waiting is Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck), whom we meet on the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary: a milestone that doesn’t bring the pleasure one would expect from a guy who, he always insists, enjoyed a deliriously happy courtship and subsequent marriage with Amy (Rosamund Pike). Instead, as Nick strolls into the downtown bar that he co-owns with twin sister Margo (Carrie Coon), he seems ... troubled. Not quite himself.

A neighbor calls; Nick and Amy’s cat seems to have gotten out of their house. Nick returns home, restores their feline friend to indoor safety, and then spots an unsettling mess of upended furniture and broken glass in the living room. And Amy is nowhere to be found.