La captura del enfermero asesino

I watched this having watched the film in which Eddie Redmayne started as Charles Cullen.

I'm glad I did it this way round, so many things I found hard to believe in the film, were actually true, the film wasn't sensationalised, it seemed to stick quite rigidly to the content.

What a documentary should be, thought provoking, dramatic, revealing, and a little bit shocking, some parts of it were actually hard to fathom, that is one messed up system.

Amy Loughren's thoughts were astonishing the whole way through, once again, I'm speechless at how rotten the establishment was, how many lives could have been saved.

One thing the film didn't really get into was Cullen's motivation, you will actually hear that in his own words here, the interview sequences were astonishing I thought. What a curious guy, I'd like to see more on him, to try and understand him a little better, he's impossible to piece together.

8/10.

An interesting documentary, however there is far too much focus on how this main nurse who ended up helping capture this killer felt so sorry for him and kept saying what a great nurse this he was. Like she couldn't stop long enough to look at reality instead of bouncing back to what she thought was reality. She even has the nerve to put the responsibility on her 11-year-old daughter of whether or not she should help the investigation! Not a bad watch though, put together well by Netflix. What does strike me though, if I may say so, is that we never hear anything bad about hospitals even though they allowed this person, and others not really unlike him - this is not the first such story -- yet the Catholic Church is practically known for harboring the few pedophiles that eventually came to light. How ironic that people are so willing to vilify the church but not the hospital yet this crime was exceedingly worse than what the church did. Just food for thought.

Truth may be stranger than fiction, but in the case of this documentary, it's an improvement. Serial killers have been a compelling subject for dramatization since Hitchcock's "Psycho," at least in American popular culture. But the fascination dates back to Jack the Ripper, and even farther back to the Middle Ages. This year it's Netflix's recent portrayal of the "good nurse" killer, a dismal excuse for biographical adaptation. It might have been worthwhile if it had offered new insight into horrible events, portrayed compelling emotions, or delved into human nature. The result could have been interesting, even entertaining, like a thriller. This documentary accomplishes all of this with no convoluted plot and contrived performances. The actual killer, Charles Cullen, is a far more chilling and impenetrable human being than the one portrayed by Eddie Redmayne. Cullen's matter-of-fact delivery as he explains the motivations that lead him to kill patients and his almost childlike self-possession are unnerving. Redmayne is a good actor, but his choice of intonation and nearly comatose performance failed to capture these real qualities. With straight-forward story telling and genuine emotion, this film imparts unimaginable horrors all the more frightening because they are so credible.

Netflix, shortly after releasing "the Good Nurse", featuring Eddie Redmayne and Jessica Chastain, put forth a documentary about the same events. The documentary follows Charles Cullen, an ICU nurse, who jumps hospitals every time he gets into trouble and finds most of his work in intensive care units, which handle patients with severe or life-threatening illnesses or injuries.

Cullen is mostly described by his coworkers as smart but corky, and a bit weird however overall a good nurse. He has a certain panacea for pharmaceuticals particularly remembering the name use of the medicines even for the rare ones.

After graduating with a nursing degree in 1986, Cullen started working for St Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston. He went on a killing spree from 1986 until his arrest in December 2003. He repeatedly claimed that he wanted to end patients' lives to end their suffering, nonetheless, he killed patients who were getting better and sometimes as young as 21 years old.

Over the years he confessed to killing 40 people. Although when considering the time frame of roughly about 16 years of nursing and the relative ease of killing his patients, he is assumed to kill more than 400 people.

I read the Good Nurse five years ago and I consider it one of the best true crime books that I have ever read, and I have read well over three hundred of them.

Charles Cullen is the good nurse in question here. The lunatic worked at several hospitals and a nursing home, leaving a trail of death behind.

Finally, after fifteen years and a number of untimely and suspicious deaths, one courageous nurse voiced her feelings to a pair of tenacious detectives.

A Catholic priest was one of Chuckie's murder victims and after being exhumed, the good reverend had a high level of the heart medication Digoxin in his body.

The recordings of Cullen are riveting and I only wish that more of them had been used in the film.

I highly recommend both the book and the film.