One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a cinematic adaptation of Ken Kesey's celebrated first novel of the same name. Jack Nicholson plays Randall P. McMurphy, a hell-raiser convicted of statutory rape who attempts to ease his incarceration period by convincing the justice system that he is mentally ill. He is sent to a state hospital where, after an initial period of adjustment, his free-spirited nature begins to win over his fellow psychiatric patients. This ultimately puts him in the passive aggressive crosshairs of Nurse Ratched (Fletcher), who is used to dominating the other patients and resents the way McMurphy is constantly undermining her authority both through overt acts of rebellion at her attempts to wield her arbitrary power and indirectly through his swaying of the hearts and minds of the previously cowed patients.