Film Review: One flew over the cuckoo's nest

Director: Milos Forman

Based on the novel of the same name by Ken Kesey, it became the second film ever to win the big five Oscar's in 1975 with It Happened One Night being the first in 1931 and The Silence of the Lambs being the only film to repeat it since. It is regularly named as one of the films that Jack Nicholson is renowned for as the rebellious Randle ''Mac'' McMurphy.

Mac is an anti-authoritarian criminal who is transferred to a mental institution for evaluation after serving a short sentence on a prison farm for raping a 15 year old girl, mainly in the hope of avoiding hard labor. He meets many colourful characters in there who he tries to bond with despite their mental problems and then use to help change ward policy at the behest of Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher).

All the gang in the mental institution

Nicholson is excellent as the rebel without a cause, just wanting to cause trouble for authority that ends up affecting the delicate minds inside the institution. There are too many supporting characters to try and individually praise too many of them but Danny DeVito is excellent as the delusional Martini whilst my favourite was Brad Dourif as the stuttering Billy Bibbit. Nurse Ratched is pitched perfectly as the antagonist of the movie; she isn't the obvious bullying authority figure it would have easy for her to have been. She is far more subtle in her techniques and in some cases you need to consider if she really is the bad influence with her methods compared to Mac who is in prison for raping a minor.

Unfortunately it tries to be too comedic to be genuinely moving and the jokes aren't always good enough to be a comedy, this means that One flew over the cuckoo's nest ends up being nestled somewhere in between. The story isn't complex or surprising but it's the characters that make you enjoy this film as they are so brilliantly acted and hard not to care about their outcomes.

3/4 funny with well-acted and interesting characters but falls between comedy and drama.