One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1976)

Rating: 95%
Another film that I've seen a little of but up till now have never fully watched, here is my review for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

Plot: McMurphy is a recidivist anti-authoritarian criminal who is transferred to a mental institution for evaluation. Even though he doesn't appear to have any mental illness, he tries to avoid hard labor to make his sentence in a more hospital environment. But in the mental institution, he encounters and starts to befriend his fellow inmates and begin to have a power struggle against the head administrative nurse, Nurse Ratched.

Boy this is such a great film. There's so much that they put into the story and they use their characters very well. You get interested in them very easily as the film goes on from Billy to Taber (played by Christopher Lloyd who had his debut in this film). But honestly, the real focus and entertainment of the film is Jack Nicholson and Louise Fletcher as McMurphy and Nurse Ratched. Their on going battle against each other just gets you more and more with McMurphy always trying to escape or fighting against Ratched's rules and Ratched having control over the patients is both suspenseful and sometimes enraging. I say enraging because of Nurse Ratched as a character and how she takes control of the institution. It's no wonder that she's #5 in AFI's top Villains. Even from the little bit of this movie that I saw years ago, I knew and witnessed enough from what I saw that I hated her guts like no one's business. As you go further and further into the movie your desire to strangle, torture, beat, or stab the daylights out of her for how cruel and cold-hearted she can be. We're talking Delores Umbridge from Harry Potter kind of hate ladies and gentleman, and it's not pretty. But thankfully with her, there's also McMurphy who is always trying to get the other patients away from her control. From stealing a hospital bus to bringing girls and booze to the hospital, he was a great opposite of Ratched.

And that's my review for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. It's a great film that has a great cast and a great story with a lovable hero and a extremely hated villain. It's a great film to watch if you haven't seen it already and it deserved to win best picture during its year.