A Mistake

Started off slow, Elizabeth Banks as a top surgeon in her field operates while teaching in a gone a bit wrong operation. The patient Lisa ends up dying in intensive care after the operation.

Then the hospital needs to find a guilty party. Her poor intern Richard takes this as a massive career loss.

For me it makes me really think about Surgeons who daily try their very best to keep us alive. Sometimes people die. It haunts them I'm sure.

Elizabeth does not a good job with her accent. Other then that it's a sad somber movie that takes a look at one case ... Heartbreaking as it is, I believe our Doctors try their very best to save us. If it can not be done then it was your time to go...not the surgeons .

I love New Zealand and its people, I really do. But we are a very safe and predictable people, and so we tend to write terrible books (I should know I was forced to read a number of them in school) and make extremely bland films. 'A Mistake' is no exception. Sure, we got some Hollywood talent across the Pacific for this one, but the result was the same.

In fairness its not all bad. I quite like a film that bases itself around a simple concept, or one minor event that leads to a number of consequences. For a film like that, this is about as good as you can expect. Yes a lot of the drama feels very forced and the characters are absolutely ridiculous and in no way resemble how normal people act, but hey, I guess you have to jazz things up a bit for the sake of the film.

I don't know, I guess it's just disappointing because you almost always know exactly what you're going to get with a New Zealand made film. I keep waiting for the day someone breaks the mold, but this wasn't that occasion. A generous 6/10.

I'm shocked at the low rating. I think it's a very powerful drama that makes you think what you would do in place of the characters. Maybe it is a little bit slow in action but it kept me in suspense and worry for the characters. Highly recommend it.

Maybe I am biased because I like medical drama and how literally life altering decisions are made. But overall the movie sends a powerful message that can be applicable in all of our everyday lives. I definitely know I am not cut out for a surgeon or any medical professional of any kind. Perhaps those who actually work in the field might disagree with the presentation of events in the film, but again for a movie I think it was great.

Gifted surgeon Elizabeth Taylor (Elizabeth Banks) finds her life thrown into disarray following a mistake by one of her team during surgery appears to lead to a patient's death. The bureaucratic Head of Surgery Andrew McGrath (Simon McBurney) seems to hold her responsible somehow and tries to control her and what she can say publicly about the incident. He also suspends her and treats her almost as 'the enemy' during the coming weeks.

I suspect most hospitals are run by people like Andrew McGrath and I suspect many health practitioners suffer the heavy hand of that type of bureaucracy. Despite seeming to want transparency and accountability, they seem to only want it on their own terms. It reminded me of course of the many investigations into health care in the UK where hospitals spend many years fighting in court to hide their malpractice. Malpractice that often -when the reports are finally made public- show that the hospital either knew about and tried to hide it, or engineered that malpractice through overly bureaucratic processes that did not fit with quality health care. The parents of the patient who died simply wanted to know the truth about what happened, and yet that was not easily available.

Although this is just a story I suspect it is highlighting the fact that this goes on, every day, in healthcare settings. Politics should have no place in healthcare but sadly it seems most hospitals are run by people like Andrew McGrath.

It's a very thought provoking film and Banks does a brilliant job of bringing Dr Elizabeth Taylor to life. I give it a solid 7.

Dr. Taylor, a female surgeon at a Wellington hospital, performs abdominal surgery on a young woman suffering from sepsis related to a problem with an anticonceptional device. Taylor's registrar, a surgeon in training, mistakenly cuts a major blood vessel when asked to insert a trocar drainage tube. The operation is extended. The patient dies the following morning. While the premise initially drew me to the film, I soon ascertained that next to nothing about it held my interest, from the main character (a stereotypically arrogant prima-donna of a surgeon) to the less-than-nuanced filmmaking. The narrative was a goner before it had barely begun. One might argue it was dead on arrival. (One needs to have a certain sympathy for the surgeon for a narrative like this to work.)