When evil lives among us

  

   Jessica Chastain and Eddie Redmayne give strong performances in The Good Nurse, a reality-based thriller grounded in the hospital environment in which two intensive-care nurses ply their trade.

   It's hardly a spoiler to tell you that Redmayne's Charlie Cullen is a serial killer whose kindly affect and cunning skill with computer systems enables him to obtain drugs that he uses to murder patients. 

   Gradually, we learn that Charlie has a checkered history. Many of his previous employers regarded Charlie with suspicion. 

   Fearing law suits and bad publicity, hospitals preferred to get rid of Charlie rather than call in the law. Demand for nurses being high, Charlie simply moved to the next job.

   Chastain portrays Amy Loughren, a New Jersey nurse with two daughters and severe health issues. Amy needs a heart transplant but can't take medical leave because she hasn't been employed long enough to qualify for it. Besides, her work-related health insurance has yet to take effect.

   Charlie builds a relationship with Amy, helping her to keep her job and offering support with her two daughters. She sees him as a good nurse and friend -- until she no longer can ignore the truth. 

   Director Tobias Lindholm works in a quiet style that keeps the lid on melodrama with Nnamdi Asomugha and Noah Emmerich playing hard-working detectives who try to stop the string of killings. A hospital administrator (Kim Dickens) offers little help. Her priority: protect the hospital. 

    Lindholm puts complex issues on the table: the inadequacies of the American health care system, the timidity of medical bureaucrats, and the vulnerability of a good person to someone with heinous motives.

   Not all of these issues register equally but Chastain and Redmayne bring credibility to a story that would seem beyond belief if the core of it weren’t based on a real case involving one of the most egregious violations of trust imaginable.

The horrible choices of war

A War stands as a complex, sobering and challenging account of one warrior's choices.

At first, A War -- the Danish nominee for a best foreign-language film Oscar -- seems to be locked into a familiar template. Vivid combat sequences are juxtaposed with scenes from the homefront. Solid in their camaraderie, soldiers endure harrowing dangers of the battlefield; those at home struggle to keep families on an even keel.

Skillfully directed as these scenes are, it's difficult not to think we know precisely where the movie is headed.

But director Tobias Lindholm has something more complex and challenging in mind than many contemporary war movies have attempted. He wants to raise the moral stakes so that we're asked, perhaps even compelled, to evaluate what transpires in Afghanistan and later in Denmark.

Along the way, we realize that it's nearly impossible to reach an entirely acceptable conclusion about the events that we've been watching. Everything we've seen results from fighting a war filled with inherently ambiguous situations in which civilians and enemies aren't always easily differentiated.

Lindholm's story focuses on Claus Pederson (Pilou Asbaek), a leader who's trying to understand all aspects of the situation in which he and his men find themselves. It doesn't take long before the heat of battle puts the clearly decent Pederson in a compromising position. He makes a decision on the fly, and it backfires. Eleven Afghan civilians die as the result of an artillery strike Pederson orders so that he can save the life of one of his men.

To the movie's credit, Pederson is no war addicted officer, a la the character played by Jeremy Renner in The Hurt Locker. He's a stable, thoughtful military man who'd rather be home with his wife (Tuva Novotny) and children, but he's also devoted to his men. Asbaek's performance makes this conflict clear and intensifies it as the story progresses.

The movie eventually forces Pederson to make more difficult choices, ensuring that A War gets under the skin and stays there.

At times, it almost feels as if we're watching a documentary, which only serves to make the experience of A War more wrenchingly real, and, by the end, you may conclude that there's something deeply troubling about putting people into combat situations in which few good choices can be found.

Credit Lindholm with bravely refusing to let us off the hook; it's impossible to see this movie without examining not only the consciences of the characters, but our own. Deeply troubling and appropriately ambiguous A War is a fine and sobering movie.

High tension aboard a cargo ship

A Danish film follows a hijacking that puts its characters to the test.

We've grown so accustomed to amped-up thrillers that we may have lost our taste for real tension, the unease that grows from a situation that's truly terrifying, perhaps even life-threatening. I wondered about that while watching Danish director Tobias Lindholm's exceptional new movie, A Hijacking.

As the title suggests, Lindholm's movie focuses on a cargo ship that has been hijacked by Somali pirates. Rather than over-dramatize an already fraught situation, Lindholm offers a deliberately constructed depiction of the events that transpire as the company that owns the ship tries to negotiate for the crew's freedom.

The company's CEO (Soren Malling) goes against the advice of an American terrorism consultant (Gary Skjoldmose Porter), and decides to handle the negotations himself. These sporadic talks require Ludvigsen's character to speak with Omar (Abdihakin Asgar), the Somali who functions as spokesman for the pirates. The CEO and Omar speak to each other in English.

Mikkel (Pilou Asbaek) becomes the story's main crew member, a genial fellow who works as the ship's cook and who's looking forward to returning home to his wife and young daughter after a stint at sea.

A Hijacking depicts the humiliations suffered by a small crew that's reliant on the ship's ownership to come up with a sum the pirates will accept. The negotiations take place via telephone with Omar speaking from the ship and the CEO, from a sterile meeting room at the company's Copenhagen headquarters. As events unfold, Ludvigsen's usually successful character begins to see the limitations of the negotiating abilities on which he prides himself.

At times, the Danish crew develops friendly relations with its captors, a group that mostly seems focused on the bottom line and that can seem as eager as their captives to get off the increasingly debilitated ship. Food supplies are dwindling, and sanitary conditons are worsening by the day.

Without fanfare or phony histrionics, Lindholm has given us an entirely credible depiction of a commercial environment in which a large corporation must learn how to come to grips with a world in which not everyone plays by the rules. Payouts may become a standard part of doing business, and the company's CEO is intent on partinjg with as little money as possible.

To his credit, Lindholm trusts his audience enough to let these points emerge without underscoring, thus earning a place for A Hijacking as one of the year's most absorbing movies. Most thrillers are not to be believed: This one is.