The bizarre and horrifying story of real-life serial killer nurse Charles Cullen is getting the two-fer treatment from Netflix this fall: first with the star-power feature film “The Good Nurse,” co-billing Oscar winners Jessica Chastain and Eddie Redmayne, followed by the November documentary “Capturing the Killer Nurse.” Both works are based on Charles Graeber’s non-fiction book “The Good Nurse: A True Story of Medicine, Madness and Murder,” about a New Jersey nurse who admitted to murdering dozens of patients and is suspected of killing even more — as many as 400.
In the hands of the Danish director Tobias Lindholm and screenwriter Krysty Wilson-Cairns (“1917,” “Last Night in Soho”) and thanks in large part to the towering twin performances of the equally chameleon-like Chastain and Redmayne, “The Good Nurse” is a solid albeit conventional medical thriller that overcomes a few plodding stretches and ends in bittersweet fashion. (The most moving sequence in the entire movie is a quietly subtle, almost mundane vignette at the very end that left tears in my eyes. I think you’ll understand and agree when you experience it for yourself.)
