After nearly a decade and a half since her last film Sunshine Cleaning, writer/director Christine Jeffs is back. Like her last film which starred Emily Blunt and Amy Adams, the New Zealand native is using a big Hollywood name to explore ethical questions about dead bodies. It’s just that A Mistake stars Elizabeth Banks and takes place in an Auckland hospital.
Based on Carl Shuker’s book of the same name, A Mistake follows Dr. Elizabeth Taylor (no, they don’t address the name), a passionate albeit socially disconnected surgeon operating on a young woman suffering from sepsis named Lisa. During a routine surgery, she offers her resident, Richard (Richard Crouchley) the opportunity to insert a medical device. When he pushes too far, Elizabeth is forced to step in and cover the mistake. Despite this, Lisa dies the next morning.
While Elizabeth stands firm in the belief that the sepsis is what killed her patient, Lisa’s parents and hospital administrators (led by Simon McBurney) look for someone to blame. It doesn’t help things that an initiative of publicly tracking doctors’ mortality rates is being instituted at the same time. As the investigation lingers on, Elizabeth’s accountability comes into question.
Overall, Banks makes a compelling Dr. Beth Taylor. Driven by arrogance and packed with a whole arsenal of humanity, Banks builds the character’s psyche brink by brick never taking the easy road. Beth is someone doing the best she can – sometimes its just for herself – but ultimately her goal is make the next right decision. She’s the kind of complex character actresses dream about playing. If only her New Zealand accent didn’t take you out of the movie for the first 20 minutes of its runtime.
To be fair to Banks, the New Zealand accent is one of the hardest to master and to do so on an independent film with a small budget, therefore not a lot of prep time is no easy feat. Why did Dr. Taylor have to be from New Zealand? There’s no reason narratively for her to be and a line or two explaining why she moved there would have solved that. Hell, an English accent would have been better, which I assume she can do as she did a transatlantic accent in the Hunger Games series.
Despite this distraction, Christine Jeffs has crafted a captivating slow-burn that you won’t want to look away from. Sure, the pacing is slow, but once the third act hits, consequences rain down, and don’t let up until the very end.
A Mistake is open in theaters now.
