Movie Review: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

This 1975 Academy Award winning film for best picture starts off with the admission of petty crook Randle P. McMurphy to the state mental hospital. We're immediately in question of why this man is being placed in a mental hospital when McMurphy has a discussion with the head doctor of the facility, and he displays no signs of mental illness only a disregard for authority. The head doctor makes it clear that he feels that McMurphy is faking mental illness to get out of the his prison cell, and work detail for, which McMurphy replies "don't ask me doc, they sent me here".

After the opening we see McMurphy being placed in a ward with 18 other patients who are sitting around discussing their issues with the head nurse, Nurse Ratched. McMurphy sits in on this discussion, and we quickly see that he's not going to get along with Nurse Ratched. After this introduction we see the daily routine of this ward, and it's patients. McMurphy starts to bond with some of the patients, and even begins considering them his friends especially a tall Indian he affectionately calls Chief. McMurphy never once looks down on these men even with all of their problems, he even breaks out, and commandeers a bus full of his new friends, and takes them on a fishing excursion.

As the movie moves along we see McMurphy, and Nurse Ratched get into debates on what the patients should be aloud to do, and McMurphy's free spirit begins to rub off on the rest of the patients. The movie all comes to a head in its final moments were we see McMurphy's love for his fellow patients shine through, and when one of the men takes his own life after a discussion with Nurse Ratched in which she makes this man feel terrible about something McMurphy tries to kill Nurse Ratched, and ends up getting something he never expected.