The Good Nurse | |
---|---|
Directed by | Tobias Lindholm |
Screenplay by | Krysty Wilson-Cairns |
Based on | The Good Nurse by Charles Graeber |
Produced by |
|
Starring | |
Cinematography | Jody Lee Lipes |
Edited by | Adam Nielsen |
Music by | Biosphere |
Production companies | |
Distributed by | Netflix |
Release dates |
|
Running time | 121 minutes [1] |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
The Good Nurse is a 2022 American thriller film starring Jessica Chastain and Eddie Redmayne, about the serial killer Charles Cullen and the fellow nurse who suspects him. The film is based on the 2013 true-crime book of the same name by Charles Graeber. It is directed by Tobias Lindholm and written by Krysty Wilson-Cairns. The film also stars Nnamdi Asomugha, Kim Dickens, and Noah Emmerich.
The Good Nurse had its world premiere at the 47th Toronto International Film Festival on September 11, 2022, and was released in select theaters on October 19, before streaming on Netflix on October 26, 2022. [2] The film received positive reviews from critics, with particular praise towards Redmayne's performance for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe Award, a British Academy Film Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award.
In 2003, Amy Loughren is a single mother and nurse working in the intensive care unit (ICU) at Parkfield Memorial Hospital in New Jersey, who is suffering from cardiomyopathy, unbeknownst to anyone at the hospital, and fears dismissal. Having no health insurance, Amy has no other choice than to remain working for another four months, in order to acquire the insurance to afford a heart transplant. The hospital recruits experienced nurse Charles Cullen to help her work the night shifts, and they quickly become good friends. Charlie discovers her condition and empathetically agrees to keep it a secret.
When an elderly patient named Ana Martinez, who was being looked after by Amy and Charlie, suddenly dies, the hospital's administrative board contacts the state police, represented by detectives Danny Baldwin and Tim Braun. However, the board, led by risk manager Linda Garran, quickly downplays it, claiming the death was unintentional and that the reason for reporting it was simply to abide by health protocol. Baldwin is immediately wary of the situation, noting they reported Martinez's death seven weeks after its occurrence after the body had been cremated. He fixates on Charlie and discovers he had been convicted of minor charges in 1995. They question Amy who notices that insulin had been administered to Martinez, demonstrated by her decreased C peptide levels, despite her being a non-diabetic. She is questioned about Charlie's character but Amy is quick to challenge them. She doesn't want to be involved in the situation and clearly trusts her colleague.
Baldwin and Braun attempt to contact the hospitals where Charlie had worked previously but none are willing to cooperate. Parkfield finally shares its investigation with the police, but Baldwin notices that it is fragmentary, leading him to snap at Garran, causing him and Braun to be banned from the hospital. Meanwhile, after Kelly Anderson, another ICU patient suffers a seizure and inexplicably dies, Amy discovers insulin had also been administered to her the night before. Suspicious, she contacts an old friend, Lori, a fellow nurse who worked with Charlie at a different hospital. Lori reveals that during Charlie's employment, the ward he was assigned to dealt with numerous sudden deaths, with the discovery of insulin in several of them. Shocked, Amy raids Parkfield's storage, discovering holes in several IV bags, indicating they had been contaminated. During her discovery, she collapses and ends up in the ER.
Finally convinced of Charlie's complicity, she alerts the detectives. They convince Kelly's husband to exhume her body in order to perform an autopsy; it reveals a dual combination of insulin and digoxin led to her death. Meanwhile, Garran fires Charlie under the pretext of minor discrepancies found in his résumé. In an attempt to entice Charlie into disclosing his actions, Baldwin and Braun have Amy arrange a meeting with him, but he reacts aggressively when she asks about his dismissal from Parkfield.
The police arrest and hold him, but are unable to get him to confess on record. Unwilling to see him released, Amy volunteers to talk to Charlie; she has a warm conversation with him, and asks that he tells the truth. After some deliberation, Charlie confesses, stating that he simply "did it". When Amy asks why, he says, "they didn't stop me."
A textual epilogue reveals Charlie was sentenced to 18 consecutive life sentences for the murders of 29 patients but that the actual number could be as high as 400. Amy underwent the heart surgery she needed, and now lives in Florida with her daughters and grandchildren.
The film was announced in November 2016, with Tobias Lindholm set to direct and Krysty Wilson-Cairns writing the screenplay adapting Charles Graeber's 2013 non-fiction book The Good Nurse: A True Story of Medicine, Madness, and Murder . Lionsgate was initially set to distribute. [3] In August 2018, Jessica Chastain and Eddie Redmayne entered negotiations to star in the film. [4]
No further development on the film was announced until February 2020. Chastain and Redmayne were confirmed to star, with Lionsgate no longer involved. [5] Netflix entered negotiations to buy the film's worldwide distribution rights for $25 million. [6]
In March 2021, Nnamdi Asomugha was added to the cast, with Noah Emmerich and Kim Dickens joining in April. [7] [8]
Filming began on April 12, 2021, in Stamford, Connecticut. [9]
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes , 74% of 168 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.7/10.The website's consensus reads: "The Good Nurse is hobbled by stilted dialogue and unrealistic story elements, but those issues are offset by strong work from a pair of talented leads." [10] Metacritic , which uses a weighted average , assigned the film a score of 65 out of 100, based on 38 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews. [11]
The Good Nurse was the most-viewed film on Netflix on October 27, 2022, the day after its release. In its first week, it debuted at number one on Netflix's Top 10 with 68.31 million viewing hours with it being Top 10 in 93 countries. [12] [13] The next week, it dropped to second, behind Enola Holmes 2 , having received 36.78 million viewing hours. [14]
Award | Date of ceremony | Category | Recipient(s) | Result | Ref. |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Golden Globe Awards | January 10, 2023 | Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture | Eddie Redmayne | Nominated | [15] |
Greater Western New York Film Critics Association Awards | December 30, 2022 | Best Supporting Actor | Nominated | [16] | |
Satellite Awards | February 11, 2023 | Best Actress – Motion Picture | Jessica Chastain | Nominated | [17] |
Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture | Eddie Redmayne | Nominated | |||
British Academy Film Awards | February 19, 2023 | Best Actor in a Supporting Role | Nominated | [18] | |
Screen Actors Guild Awards | February 26, 2023 | Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role | Nominated | [19] |
Charles Edmund Cullen is an American serial killer. Cullen, a nurse, murdered dozens—possibly hundreds—of patients during a 16-year career spanning several New Jersey and Pennsylvania medical centers until being arrested in 2003. He confessed to committing as many as 40 murders at least 29 of which have been confirmed; though interviews with police, psychiatrists and journalists suggest he committed many more. Researchers who are intimately involved in the case believe Cullen may have murdered as many as 400 people. However, most murders cannot be confirmed due to lack of records.
Kerry Marisa Washington is an American actress. She gained wide public recognition for starring as crisis management expert Olivia Pope in the ABC drama series Scandal (2012–2018). For her role, she was twice nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series and once for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Drama. Her portrayal of Anita Hill in the HBO television political thriller film Confirmation (2016), and her role as Mia Warren in the Hulu miniseries Little Fires Everywhere (2020), both earned nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie.
Edward John David "Eddie" Redmayne is an English actor. He has received various accolades, including an Academy Award, a Tony Award, a BAFTA Award, and two Olivier Awards.
The National Board of Review Award for Best Acting by an Ensemble is an annual film award given by the National Board of Review.
Jessica Michelle Chastain is an American actress and producer. Known for primarily starring in projects with feminist themes, she has received various accolades, including an Academy Award and a Golden Globe, in addition to nominations for two Tony Awards and a Primetime Emmy Award. Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2012.
Jessie Buckley is an Irish actress and singer. The accolades she has received include a Laurence Olivier Award, and nominations for an Academy Award and three BAFTA Awards.
The Children's Monologues is a theatrical performance featuring the adapted stories of children's first-hand experiences in South Africa. It was directed by Danny Boyle and first produced as a one-off charity performance in November 2010 at the Old Vic Theatre in London in aid of Danny Boyle's arts charity Dramatic Need. An anniversary performance was produced the Royal Court Theatre in London on 25 October 2015 as an anniversary gala, and it premiered in New York City at Carnegie Hall in 2017. The shows were also produced at theatres in South Africa around the same times.
Natalie Paul is an American actress. She has acted in several television shows such as The Deuce, Smash, The Sinner, and Power. She is best known for playing Doreen Henderson on Show Me a Hero and for her role as Antoinette in the film Crown Heights.
Ava is a 2020 American action thriller film directed by Tate Taylor written by Matthew Newton and produced by Chastain's production company, Freckle Films. The film stars Jessica Chastain, John Malkovich, Common, Geena Davis, Colin Farrell, Ioan Gruffudd and Joan Chen.
Jody Lee Lipes is an American cinematographer and filmmaker.
Krysty Norma Lesley Wilson-Cairns is a Scottish screenwriter. Born and raised in Glasgow, she studied at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and the National Film and Television School. During her teenage years, she was a runner on television series including the detective show Taggart. Her script for the unproduced science fiction thriller Aether made the 2014 Black List and led to a staff writer role on the television show Penny Dreadful. Her feature film debut was the screenplay for the Sam Mendes-directed 2019 war film 1917. She co-wrote it with Mendes and received nominations for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Original Screenplay.
Freckle Films is an American film and television production company. It was founded by Jessica Chastain in 2016. The company's projects include the biopics The Eyes of Tammy Faye (2021) and George & Tammy (2022), both starring Chastain.
Scenes from a Marriage is an American drama television miniseries developed, written and directed by Hagai Levi produced for HBO, and starring Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain. It is an English-language remake of the 1973 Swedish miniseries of the same name by Ingmar Bergman. It was presented at the 2021 Venice Film Festival and it premiered on September 12, 2021, on HBO. For his performance, Isaac was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award, a SAG Award and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Miniseries or Television Film, with Chastain also earning a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Limited Series, Anthology Series or Television Film.
Mothers' Instinct is a 2024 American psychological thriller film directed by Benoît Delhomme in his directorial debut, and starring Jessica Chastain, Anne Hathaway, Josh Charles, and Anders Danielsen Lie. It is a remake of Olivier Masset-Depasse's 2018 French-language film, which itself was an adaptation of the 2012 novel Mothers' Instinct by Barbara Abel.
AGC Studios is an American film and television production studio. It was founded and launched by Chairman and CEO Stuart Ford in February 2018 as a platform to develop, produce, finance and globally license a diverse portfolio of feature films, scripted, unscripted and factual television, digital and musical content from its dual headquarters in Los Angeles and London. The new studio's Hollywood output has a wide-ranging multicultural focus, designed for exploitation across an array of global platforms including major studio partnerships, streaming platforms, traditional broadcast and cable television networks and independent distributors, both in the U.S. and internationally.
Amy Loughren is an American reiki master and former registered nurse who is known for assisting in the arrest and prosecution of serial murderer Charlie Cullen.
The Good Nurse: A True Story of Medicine, Madness, and Murder is a 2013 true-crime book about Charles Cullen, a nurse and convicted serial killer, written by American journalist and author Charles Graeber. Graeber documents how Cullen was able to move several times within the health care system in the Northeast of the United States and how police detectives, with the help of a confidential informant, Amy Loughren, were able to bring him to justice. The book also reveals the institutional and moral shortcomings of hospitals and administrators, who enabled Cullen to move from place to place in order to protect bottom lines instead of caring for the well-being of patients. The book is a follow-up to Graeber's 2007 New York magazine article about Cullen.
Capturing the Killer Nurse is a 2022 true crime documentary film about serial killer Charles Cullen and how investigators were able to prove Cullen was killing patients while working in hospitals and at a nursing home as a nurse in the United States. The film is based on the 2013 book The Good Nurse by Charles Graeber and is directed by Tim Travers Hawkins, who wrote the screenplay with Robin Ockleford. Produced by Sandpaper Films and Fifty Fifty Post, it was released on November 11, 2022, on the streaming service Netflix.
The Savant is an upcoming American crime thriller miniseries based on the novel by Andrea Stanley. The series will be directed by Matthew Heineman, and is starring Jessica Chastain and Nnamdi Asomugha.