Review of The Good Doctor (2011) by Maksim B — 19 Mar 2013

The Good Doctor is a creepy, controversial and slow-paced tale of obsession, which is short of suspense and lacks the ability to maintain the audience's attention. Despite the formidable performances, the compelling character study and the initially challenging concept, the movie has no clear message or direction. With no true suspense build-up and weak thrilling moments, it is one of those movies, which could have been much better.

The young and painfully ambitious doctor Martin Blake (Orlando Bloom) is driven by his strive for career, while he faces the disappointments of meeting the health-care reality during his first residential assignment after graduation. Confronted with missed expectations his Dr. Blake finds himself in love with a young and beautiful patient, while he gets lost in the two worlds of his consciousness. Centered around this character, The Good Doctor is all about Orlando Bloom. His character is torn apart between his two internal worlds, between love, obsession, disappointment, ambition and loneliness. Bloom's character is chillingly cold-blooded: just when one thinks that he could not go a step further, he goes indeed, while his mental instability and internal torments increase.

Unfortunately, director Lance Daly could not make the best use of Orlando Bloom's terrific performance and his incredibly interesting character. The story-telling is chaotic and it is never decided what is the focus of Daly's story: Bloom's careerism desire and social disappointments; his emotional loneliness or disturbing love obsession. With no clear message, with no particular issue on focus the movie is sharp-less, almost impotent when it comes to suspense and tension-building.

This is one of those cases when a movie is so polarizing that it is hard to take a stand and label it. The brilliant features of this psychological drama are totally almost fully overshadowed by the its flaws. The Good Doctor worth giving it a try for the sake of seeing the terrific, darkly insane Orlando Bloom; for the rest it is a mediocre delivery, which could have been so much better.