Nurse Betty (2000)

Directed by: Neil LaBute | 110 minutes | thriller, comedy, romance, crime | Actors: Morgan Freeman, Renée Zellweger, Chris Rock, Greg Kinnear, Aaron Eckhart, Tia Texada, Crispin Glover, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Allison Janney, Kathleen Wilhoite, Elizabeth Mitchell, Susan Barnes, Harriet Sansom Harris, Sung Hi Lee, Laird Mackintosh

Like so many other women in the world, Betty Sizemore dreams of a romance with the handsome television doctor Dr. David Ravel. She sympathizes intensely with all his problems and can literally quote everything he or his opponents say. In this way she tries to escape the grind of her life as a waitress. Moreover, in her sweet daydreams, she doesn’t have to pay too much attention to her clumsy husband Del who also cheats on her.

By coincidence, Betty witnesses Del’s unfortunate confrontation with the older Charlie (Morgan Freeman) and his younger partner-in-crime Wesley (Chris Rock). For their client, they only want to steal from Del the batch of drugs that Del has unlawfully appropriated, but the fanatic Wesley takes Charlie’s exposé about Indians who under certain circumstances scalped their opponents a bit too literally. To put Del out of his gory misery, Charlie shoots him dead. But they can’t find the drugs and when they find out that Betty saw Del’s murder and is also in possession of the drugs, they travel after her.

Charlie may be a criminal who carries out his assignments neatly, but he is also a romantic. In order to track down Betty, kill her and regain the drugs, he creates a psychological characterization of her. But what he and his partner didn’t count on is that as he gains a deeper understanding of her character, he will fall in love with his future victim.

‘Nurse Betty’ has a few strong assets: an original screenplay with a nice mix of pitch black humor and sentimentality and perfectly cast protagonists. The gullibility of the gentle Betty can only be played by Renée Zellweger in such a way that you don’t get irritated and want to shout: ‘Do something about it’, but just like the people around her and the people she meets along the way, wish her the best with all my love. And Morgan Freeman is captivating as the old lovelorn fool on his last job, Chris Rock excellent as his cranked-up younger partner and Greg Kinnear is superb as the slick actor who sees his chance to put Betty in his favour.

The screenplay balances nicely between the reality and the dream world of Betty and Charlie, but also shows in a plausible way that with their at first sight too foolish dreams, they are actually no misfits. Everyone is guilty in one way or another of seeing things the way they see fit. The film is a plea to dream as romantically as possible. That way, your dreams are most likely to come true. The bitterness and sometimes gross violence keep all this sweetness tolerable and tasty. Very fun and very entertaining.