Orlando Bloom stars as an English doctor newly arrived in California in Lance Daly’s highly un-Hippocratic psychological thriller The Good Doctor. Black comedy lurks just below the suspenseful surface, with more than a hint of Lolita-esque absurdity as the doc falls under the kittenish spell of a nubile blonde high-school patient.
Irish helmer Daly, whose Kisses set a couple of innocent kids wandering alone through the murky, uncertain byways of Dublin, here looses a morally compromised doctor amid the gleaming sterility of Southern California. Ploeck concentrates his attentions upon curing the kidney infection of statuesque teenage Diane (a pitch-perfect Riley Keough) and resorts to unethical behaviour to keep her in his kingdom, tampering with her medication to draw out her recovery. When an insolent orderly (Michael Pena) happens upon evidence of his transgression, Ploeck ventures more deeply into medical malfeasance. Sardonically, the further Ploeck slides down the slippery slope of malpractice, the more warmly he finds himself accepted into a health care fraternity that previously viewed him askance. - Ronnie Scheib, Variety
Irish composer Brian Byrne composed the score for The Good Doctor and Albert Nobbs.
