Producers: Greg Berlanti, Sarah Schechter, Robbie Rogers, Cora Palfrey and Philip Herd  Director: Michael Grandage    Screenplay: Ron Nyswaner   Cast: Harry Styles, Emma Corrin, Gina McKee, Linus Roache, David Dawson, Rupert Everett, Kadiff Kirwan, Maddie Rice, Dora Davis and Jack Bandeira   Distributor: Prime Video

Grade: C+

Last spring saw the release of Peeter Rebane’s “Firebird,” a fact-based story of a young Russian soldier who fell in love with a fighter pilot at a Soviet air force base in Estonia in the late 1970s; they continued their affair secretly even after the pilot married a friend of theirs, with dire result. The love that dare not speak its name, to use Lord Alfred Douglas’ famous phrase, recurs in a similar triangular form but a different period and place in Michael Grandage’s “My Policeman,” adapted by Ron Nyswaner from Bethan Roberts’ 2012 novel.  Much of the interest the film generates will undoubtedly derive from the fact that superstar Harry Styles plays one of the men.

The story takes place in Sussex, primarily the beach resort of Brighton (where the film was elegantly shot by Ben Davis, the locations, production design by Maria Djurkovic and costumes by Annie Symons offering plenty of rich period detail), in the late 1950s and the 1990s, the time frame shifting back and forth from the one decade to the other.  Mousy Marion Taylor (Emma Corrin), a teacher, has eyes for handsome Tom Burgess (Styles), the brother of one of her friends who joins the police force.  Anxious to improve his mind, Tom asks Marion for help in choosing books to read.  His thirst for knowledge is also incited by a chance meeting with Patrick Hazelwood (David Dawson), the cultured curator of the Brighton museum, who shows him the collection there, as well as at his flat, where he invites the bobby to pose for one of his sketches.  The two wind up in bed together, in a scene that includes some nudity while remaining discreetly enough staged not to offend a mainstream audience. 

Despite this, Tom introduces Marion to Patrick, and all three become friends, going out together to restaurants and operas, though clearly Marion sees the relationship between the two men as curiously close.  Eventually Tom proposes marriage to Marion, and she accepts—though the honeymoon is interrupted by Patrick’s arrival at their remote cabin to cook them a celebratory meal.  He also arranges a clinch with Tom in the garage before departing—a scene that Marion secretly observes, reacting with a stern decision to “fix” her husband.  Meanwhile Patrick’s safety is endangered by his habit of frequenting underground gay clubs and hooking up with other men (at a time when English law criminalized homosexual activity and brutal police methods were marshaled against it).  He also keeps diaries that would prove highly dangerous to him if their contents became known to the authorities.

The tragedy that follows is revealed in flashbacks occurring in the second major portion of the film, set four decades later at Marion and Tom’s seaside house, where Marion (Gina McKee) installs Patrick (Rupert Everett), incapacitated by a stroke, in the spare bedroom, much to the displeasure of Tom (Linus Roache). Tom refuses to have anything to do with their guest and often simply leaves the house for the pub or a walk on the beach with his dog.  Marion insists on nursing the stricken man and prods Tom to reconnect with him, eventually taking a step that forces their reconciliation—partially out of guilt, but also resignation.

The makers of “My Policeman” apparently think that their film is somehow groundbreaking, and the bedroom scenes featuring Styles and Dawson do go a bit further than those in most other films about gay men made for mass consumption.  (It’s certainly far different from the treatment of Andrew Beckett’s sex life in 1993’s “Philadelphia,” which Nyswaner wrote, which was practically nonexistent.)  But British films about the perniciousness of the criminal “stigma” attached to homosexuality prior to 1967 have been around at least since “Victim” (1961), and the trifling amount of skin shown here is now quite tame.

Otherwise with its fastidiously elegant décor and dress the film fits quite neatly into the Masterpiece Theatre mold, and comes across as stuffy despite its desire to seem romantic and daring, with Grandage’s direction and Chris Dickens’ editing adding to the stodgy, often stilted feel.  Another element that feeds into that familiar mood is Steven Price’s syrupy score, which (whether by his choice or Grandage’s) takes a turn into howler territory when Patrick induces Tom to accompany him to Venice as his assistant, ostensibly to collect new pieces for the museum but actually to give them time to enjoy one another away from Marion.  It’s bad enough that Grandage has a nun walk by and theatrically avert her eyes when she notices the two men caressing in an alcove off the sidewalk; but the whole Venice sequence is accompanied by the strains of Vivaldi’s “Gloria,” which suddenly blares out as if to give a celestial imprimatur to their lovemaking.  Not quite as embarrassing, but nonetheless ill-advised, is a scene in which Marion complains to a close colleague (Maddie Rice) about her husband’s sexual inclinations, only to elicit a retort that italicizes her obtuseness and bigotry. In such instances subtlety is tossed out the window.

Insofar as the acting is concerned, much of the attention will be focused on Styles, and one could most charitably describe his performance as adequate, neither dreadful nor indicative of great thespian talent; physically he resembles Ewan McGregor, but dramatically McGregor on an off day  Of the others in the fifties cast, Corrin comes off better than Dawson, effectively conveying the fear and resentment simmering under Marion’s seemingly placid exterior, while he takes a stereotypically effete route.  Likewise McKee’s Marion is the dominant figure in the decades-later scenes that are sometimes clumsily juxtaposed by Dickens with the fifties ones, though even she can’t invest the woman with much more than generalized warmth and regret.  The men are given little opportunity to register anything beyond the obvious—Roache is somber and surly, while Everett growls cantankerously and demands forbidden cigarettes.  The two do share a nice final tableau, however.

Roberts’ book, incidentally, was based on the relationship of eminent writer E.M. Forster with a much younger policeman, Robert Buckingham, and Buckingham’s wife May.  (Roberts wrote of her inspiration in an article in The Guardian of February 17, 2012.)  It’s somewhat tacky, but true, to suggest that “My Policeman” might have been more compelling if it had dramatized the actual Forster-Buckingham story than the fictional one Roberts fashioned from it.    

Producers: Scott Franklin, Darren Aronofsky and Michael A. Jackman   Director: Tobias Lindholm  Screenplay: Krysty Wilson-Cairns   Cast: Eddie Redmayne, Jessica Chastain, Nnamdi Asomugha, Noah Emmerich, Kim Dickens, Malik Yoba, Alix West Lefler, Devyn McDowell, Judith Delgado, Jesus-Papoleto Melendez and Marcia Jean Kurtz    Distributor: Netflix

Grade: C+

Top-flight talent on both sides of the camera tells a conventional true-crime story in this Netflix docu-drama.  “The Good Nurse” is a solid, respectable piece of work, with a creepily effective performance by Eddie Redmayne, but it doesn’t stand out in this now-crowded genre.

Redmayne plays Charles Cullen, a nurse who was convicted in 2006 of killing nearly thirty patients in Pennsylvania and New Jersey hospitals through drug injections, but is suspected of having murdered hundreds more from the late eighties on.  Co-star Jessica Chastain is Amy Loughren, Cullen’s colleague in the ICU of Somerset Medical Center who befriended him there but, after becoming suspicious of him in a number of recent patient deaths, cooperated with police investigators to bring him to justice.   

The first English-language film by Danish screenwriter and director Tobias Lindholm, “Nurse” was adapted from Charles Graeber’s 2013 book on the case by Krysty Wilson-Cairns, who used some creative license to ramp up the tension.  It’s understandable that the script fictionalizes the identities of Cullen’s victims at Somerset—though the fictionalized versions, like Ana Martinez (Judith Delgado) and her grieving husband Sam (Jesus-Papoleto Melendez) aren’t given much depth, her exhumation shown in greater detail than her suffering.  It’s also laudable that it doesn’t underplay the dogged work of police detectives Danny Baldwin (Nnamdi Asomugha) and Tim Braun (Noah Emmerich) in cracking the case.

The film does, however, overplay certain elements to heighten dramatic effect.  It’s unquestionable that various hospitals that became concerned about Cullen over the course of his dark career chose, for reasons of financial liability and potential bad publicity, to sweep their misgivings under the carpet, allowing him to secure employment elsewhere.  That policy—not unlike the Catholic Church’s transfer of pedophile priests to other parishes—is embodied here in the person of Somerset administrator Linda Garran (Kim Dickens), who, out of fear of risk to the institution, is portrayed as actually impeding the police investigation.  The desire for socio-economic commentary is praiseworthy, but it’s done with a dramatic bludgeon rather than a scalpel, not only in the depiction of Garran, but in a conversation Loughren has with Jackie (Marcia Jean Kurtz), a former co-worker, who’s free in disclosing rumors about Cullen that circulated during his tenure at another hospital.

The personal situation of Loughren, moreover, comes in for a bit of exaggeration.  The nurse did suffer from cardiomyopathy, which she desired to keep secret from the hospital.  But the screenplay elevates that into a pressing need for a heart transplant, and emphasizes that she must keep working for another four months to secure the insurance that would cover the cost—leading to the development of a closer relationship with Cullen, to whom she confesses her condition, and his increasing importance in the lives of her daughters Alex and Maya (Alix West Lefler and Devyn McDowell, respectively).  The use of the “four month” timetable as a sort of count-down mechanism to create a sense of desperation is a dramatic contrivance (as is the entire transplant subplot, since Loughren’s condition ultimately didn’t require one), the issue of insurance apparently wasn’t crucial, and the degree of Cullen’s involvement with Amy’s daughters is substantially overstated (and, at one point, employed for a crude shock moment).

Taken together, all of this pushes “The Good Nurse” in the direction of a LifeTime-type movie, yet it has considerable strengths.  Lindholm brings the cool, almost antiseptic atmosphere familiar from his Danish work to bear, and his collaborators—production designer Shane Valentino, costumer Amy Westcott, composer Biosphere, editor Adam Nielsen and particularly cinematographer Jody Lee Lipes—add to the stark, grey mood.  Chastain makes Loughren’s mixed emotions about suspecting—and then turning on—a man she’d come to like and depend on, while wrestling with her own personal crisis—credible.  The supporting cast is strong down the line. 

And, most importantly, in Redmayne’s skilled hands Cullen becomes a frighteningly unstable character, at once shyly charming, vaguely menacing and suffering from his own domestic difficulties (only slightingly alluded to)—qualities the actor captures from the very start in a cunningly fashioned scene in which Cullen stands enigmatically watching as a medical team tries, offscreen, to revive one of his victims; Lindholm’s staging here, and Redmayne’s eerie composure, make for a truly chilling tableau.  It’s a quietly sinister persona he manages to sustain to throughout most of the film, until he rages when discovered at the very end before calming down under Amy’s soothing influence.

Of course the film can’t explain what made Cullen commit such horrors; imprisoned for eleven consecutive life sentences, he’s never coherently explained his motivations himself.  Perhaps he can’t, and so one shouldn’t blame the filmmakers for their failure to clarify what drove him.  Yet as is so often the case with such true-crime tales, even one done with such a high level of craftsmanship as this, we’re simply left with the message that such things are inexplicable, and that the institutional forces that allow them to happen are never held accountable. That dramatizations of these stories have become so popular is a commentary on the bleakness of the world-view that’s come to dominate society today—a sense of futility in the face of pervasive crime and corruption.

Still, you can be certain that as long as we keep voyeuristically watching them, more such stories are bound to come. At least this one allows us to salute some good work from the actors and crew, even if in the end that’s not quite enough.