One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest Movie Review Intense and Extraordinarily Captivating

Table of Contents

One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest Movie Review- Intense and Extraordinarily Captivating “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” is a powerful, heart moving, brain touching, soul captivating dark-humored satirical drama. It was directed by Milos Forman and stars Jack Nicholson as Randle McMurphy, a sane patient at a mental institution, and includes other supporting actors like Brad Durif, Danny DeVito, Christopher Lloyd, Louise Fletcher, Sydney Lassick, Will Sampson, and William Redfield. The film is based on the 1963 novel One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey. It was nominated for nine Academy Awards and won five of them. The film is a masterpiece. From Nicholson’s exceptional performance as the sane patient declaring himself as insane to Louise Fletcher’s stone-cold, spine chilling, fear inducing glare, and former military nurse role as Nurse Ratched, it is an intense movie that sheds light on the horrific ways mental patients were treated back in the day. Randle Patrick McMurphy, the principal protagonist of the film is a criminal who claims to be insane to avoid serving prison time for sexually assaulting a teenage girl. He is taken to a mental institution that is managed by a tyranistic oppressor, Nurse Ratched. Nurse Ratched has complete control over all her patients who need to remain on her good side in order for her to recommend their release. Her power and influence is all the more telling on the warders who are in the institution voluntarily rather than those who are forced to do so. McMurphy and his dissident nature causes him to rebel by refusing to take his medication, constantly plotting ways to escape, questioning Nurse Ratched’s actions, and requesting change in the tragic ways the patients are being treated. McMurphy realizes that he is not the only person faking his mental illness. He finds out that Bromden (played by Will Sampson) who he calls Chief is neither mentally ill, deaf, nor dumb, leading to a progressive friendship between the two. McMurphy informs Bromden of his plans to escape, and on a late night, he sneaks into the nurse’s office, calls his friend and tells her to him his escape. He tells her to bring shoes, change of clothes, and booze.