Cool Hand Jack

Rating: 8/10 (9 August 2008)

The most interesting thing about One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is how easily the script could have chosen the easy road, making protagonist McMurphy (Nicholson) more conventionally heroic and antagonist Nurse Ratched (Fletcher) a fully-fledged monster. This movie, however, defies easy shortcuts.
We are shown from the beginning that McMurphy is scum, a violent man with a history of aggression and sex crimes. In a normal situation he would be despicable: he is, after all, a loud-mouthed criminal trying to exploit the legal system to avoid jail. And yet, in the oppressive atmosphere of the sanitarium, he becomes the leader of a rebellion - a righteous one, we feel. McMurphy is the defiant trickster in a leaden, cruel environment... so we end up on his side.
On the flipside, Nurse Ratched is not the devil, but an earnest professional trying to do her job. Even if she clearly gets a kick from exerting her authority - the scene in which she stops voting to prevent McMurphy's victory has a creepy "Stanford prison experiment" vibe - she doesn't appear to have truly evil intentions. Even her reluctance to send McMurphy away seems motivated by a refusal to give up on him. And yet Ratched is smug, obtuse, devoid of empathy... and she becomes a memorable movie villain.
The two leads are perfect. Nicholson gives an infectious performance which won him a well-deserved Academy Award; Fletcher plays Ratched as an icy bureaucrat, her well-meaning cruelty scarier than dozens of foaming-at-the-mouth comic book villains.
Still, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is an ensemble piece: the rest of the cast does a superb job too (Forman has always been an actors' director), from young Danny DeVito and Cristopher Lloyd to Brad Dourif, from Sydney Lassick to Will Sampson as Chief Bromden.
8.5/10 For another excellent movie Handling similar themes, watch Cool Hand Luke with Paul Newman.