Nurse Betty

A modern-day fable for dysfunctional times. Alternately funny and heartbreaking, “Nurse Betty” is that rarity, a big budget Hollywood movie with an indie soul. With a sharply observed script that constantly surprises, and at least two of the year’s best performances, the movie arrives like a cool autumn wind after the bloated, overheated studio fare we have been forced to tolerate all summer. Never was such relief more welcome. “Nurse Betty” is directed by Neil LaBute, who is a very talented director, but who made his name with two of the most scabrous, lacerating movies in recent memory, “In the Company of Men” and “Your Friends and Neighbors,” both of which he wrote, and both of which are mostly about the dreadful way supposedly civilized people treat each other. Maybe LaBute was humanized by working with a script other than his own, or maybe he was simply thawed by Renee Zellweger’s luminous presence on the set, but the new picture offers a warmth that was sorely lacking in his earlier work.

Zellweger, so cruelly misused in the trying “Me, Myself & Irene,” recaptures the glow that she displayed in “Jerry Maguire.” In the hands of a lesser actress the role could have devolved into caricature, but every minute she is onscreen seems totally authentic. Zellweger plays Betty Sizemore, a small town Kansas waitress suffering indignity upon indignity at the hands of her scumbag husband, Del. (Del is played by Aaron Eckhart, a protean actor who seems to utterly change his persona with every new role. He should be more famous than he is.) She is the kind of person who never stops smiling, even when treated poorly by others. You can tell that she hurts inside, though she would never admit it. Betty has a purity of spirit, an innate goodness, that seems almost otherworldly. She also has a bit of a crush on daytime drama star George McCord (Greg Kinnear, very good) who plays Dr. David Ravell on a cheesy hospital soap opera that Betty watches religiously. When Betty witnesses the brutal murder of Del by two hit men, Charlie (Freeman) and Wesley (Rock), she snaps. In a kind of fugue state, she strikes out for Los Angeles to reunite with Dr. Ravell, whom she now believes to be her long lost fiancé.

Charlie and Wesley pursue her, both to eliminate the witness to Del’s murder, and because Betty has inadvertently taken the contraband they were hired to recover. Establishing a person with mental illness as your protagonist is a risky proposition, because her delusions can seem very tiresome, and the fact that people seem to ignore them even more so. The script, by John C. Richards and James Flamberg, deftly avoids this trap, because everyone who meets Betty almost immediately recognizes that she has a problem. They treat her gingerly, as if afraid to harm her. (The one exception to this is George McCord, who, being a star, lives in his own sort of delusion.

But even he eventually realizes what everybody else already knows.) There is a terrific moment in which Ellen (Harriet Sansom), a barmaid Betty meets on her journey, suddenly realizes that Betty is sick. Ellen’s reaction--amusement quickly changing to sadness--mirrors our own. The movie must strike a careful balance between making Betty’s involuntary charade believable and keeping everyone else in the movie from looking like an idiot. Part of the solution is that a lot of the show biz types in LA think she is a new starlet trying to get a break by putting on an act. If ever there was an industry that would believe someone would try a stunt like that, it’s the movie business (I’m willing to bet that it has actually happened). LaBute sustains the tension beautifully and chooses exactly the right moment to let Betty’s delusion come crashing down; five minutes longer and it would have become annoying, not to mention unbelievable. If there is a weakness in the script, it’s the slightly saccharine ending, which undercuts just a little the wistful, bittersweet tone of the movie to that point. The performances, though, are the heart of this picture. Every role is perfectly cast, and the script allows bright moments for even minor characters.

Chris Rock, as the volatile young hit man Wesley, is wild, funny, and not a little scary; he burns up the screen every time he is on it. If anyone but Morgan Freeman had been cast as his partner and mentor, Rock might have incinerated him. It is no longer news that Freeman is a great actor. In his role as Charlie, the older and wiser hit man, who is looking towards retirement after completing his “last job,” Freeman reaches deep inside and comes up yet again with something special. He creates an indelible portrait of a refined man in an unrefined business (the “garbage man of humanity” in his words), who nevertheless understands his role in the greater scheme of things, and who truly looks for the goodness in people whenever possible. It is no wonder then that he becomes infatuated with Betty, for the same reasons that we do. Freeman’s performance is one that will not soon be forgotten. Nor will “Nurse Betty.”