A Mistake (#602)

I saw a powerful, moralistic medical drama that was dark, deep, and predominantly tragic. Made in New Zealand with the sometimes difficult accents of the actors, it was excellently acted and filmed, including some very graphic operations and technical medical language. In A MISTAKE, Elizabeth is obviously a very gifted surgical consultant, overseeing a student in difficult surgery on a young woman, who subsequently dies.  The patient's parents are distraught, unsatisfied with the explanation of their daughter's death and eventually there is a newspaper article which accuses Elizabeth of mishandling the surgery.  This all comes at a time when the hospital administrators are introducing a new set of dats that reveals numerically individual doctors and their success and failure rates.  Elizabeth objects and she is suspended and soon after her surgical student, wracked with guilt over the patient's death, commits suicide.  The film is direct and points fingers and plods at times, but it is a good and interesting story.  Aside from its never-ending downbeat script, I thought it was a very good film which held my attention.  69% of critics gave it a thumbs up, but no audience rating. I'm glad I chose A Mistake over films like Am I a Racist?, The Forge, The Shade and Transformers One.  Previews were varied.  Up coming are Lee, a true story of a famous wartime female  journalist and photographer, Flight Risk, a thriller starring Mark Wahlberg, Saturday Night, which is about the TV show Saturday Night Live and a story of the election of as new pope amid intrigue entitled Conclave.