The Good Doctor [2011]

July 31, 2014

I always thought of Orlando Bloom as a pretty boy with that lovable British accent, but this is the first time he showed his full acting skillset. Yup, Legolas decided that enough is enough and started acting in “real” movies. Three trilogies and a tone of fantasy movies threatened to eat his career and Private Blackburn was too small to stop that. But, let’s get back to the movie. It’s really intense and creepy with that anything can happen atmosphere. They simply took the characters and their motives and followed the story wherever it led them. Realism is the keyword here because you don’t have to make up some elaborate plots to make your movie good, just follow the characters. If they’re interesting the movie will write itself, same as life. The Good Doctor flows like a river, like a strange murky, and yet clear river.

Dr. Martin Blake or Frank Grimes – Grimey (if you remember him from Simpsons) is a young doctor dedicated to his profession entirely. He is very ambitious and proud of the things he has accomplished. There is a desire in him, a desire to be The Good Doctor. He has no friends, family, or anything else that might distract him from this mission. That type of dedication is both admirable and scary. I would go with scary myself. He just started his internship and caught a relatively simple case. But that’s the thing with simple cases, they only appear to be that way…

Michael Peña, Rob Morrow and J.K. Simmons were phenomenal as supporting cast, and the leads were perfect. I really believe that this is the doctor’s life and that they realistically portrayed all the aspects, especially hospital life. The story is simple and yet so complicated and beautiful. Especially for later analysis that just strengthens the 10 that this movie got from me. I hope you will find it as interesting as I did. When you are a doctor working in a hospital you have this immense responsibility on your shoulders. Or at least you ought to have it. And sure, after a while, you will get somewhat acclimated to the stress and the severity of the decisions you’re making.

However, the thing that interests me the most is the reason why. Why did someone decide to become a doctor? Is it because this profession is well respected or they just want to help people. Most of them are genuinely good people and good at their job but as always the element of power is something that’s interesting to analyze. And I don’t want to shit on the profession here or to generalize, just to emphasize the fact that they are people too. People with flaws and virtues and everything else that comes with this life we’re living. The Good Doctor does an excellent job of bringing that point home. It abandons all the shiny stuff and focuses on important things.

One last thing, at the end of the movie I want you to ask yourself, how many good doctors are there in the world… And do all of them have the creepy haircut our doctor has?