‘A Good Person’s Addiction Drama is Carried by Florence Pugh and Morgan Freeman
Zach Braff’s latest drama rests heavily on his preoccupations with flawed humans struggling to make connections.
Florence Pugh as Allison in 'A Good Person,' directed by Zach Braff, a Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures film. Credit: Jeong Park / Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures. © 2023 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Releasing into theaters on March 24th, ‘A Good Person’ represents the latest film from actor/director/writer Zach Braff, known –– outside of his TV acting work on the show ‘Scrubs’ –– for making the movies ‘Garden State’, ‘Wish I Was Here’ and ‘Going in Style’.
With ‘A Good Place’, he chooses, as with his previous film, to eschew appearing on camera, instead putting Morgan Freeman (who co-starred with Michael Caine and Alan Arkin in ‘Going in Style’) and Florence Pugh front and center.
A Good Person
What is the plot of ‘A Good Person’?
‘A Good Person’ follows Allison (Pugh), a young woman who would seem to have a bright future ahead of her. She’s blissfully engaged to marry Nathan (Chinaza Uche) and successful in her career as a drug rep, but a momentary lapse in concentration while driving ends in a deadly car crash that kills her soon-to-be sister- and brother-in-law.
Allie descends into depression, confusion and, thanks to the painkillers prescribed for her injuries, addiction. She meets Daniel (Freeman), a former New Jersey police officer and recovering alcoholic who was to be Allie’s father-in-law before the accident –– though they’d not met previously because of his estrangement from his eldest son –– by chance at an AA meeting and begins an awkward but healing path to understanding. Through Daniel’s teenage granddaughter Ryan (Celeste O’Connor), who was orphaned by the accident, more difficult steps towards peace and forgiveness are taken.
But as Allie — living with her mom, Diane (Molly Shannon), who has her own red-wine-and-pill dependence — finds her need for painkillers getting more intense, and her decision-making abilities affected, this story of redemption, friendship, and courage tackles other issues of contemporary life.
(L to R) Florence Pugh as Allison and Morgan Freeman as Daniel in 'A Good Person,' directed by Zach Braff, a Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures film. Credit: Jeong Park / Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures. © 2023 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Related Article: Florence Pugh and Writer/Director Zach Braff Talk 'A Good Person'
Pugh and Freeman shine in the movie
Along with his particular style and focus on characters looking to fix something broken within themselves, Braff has developed a welcome ability to cast and put trust in some excellent actors. From his first outing, which gave Natalie Portman a chance to shine (albeit in a role many criticized as a cliched “manic pixie dream girl” serving to help Braff’s main character Andrew find his own life path), the director has two stellar lead performers.
Pugh has established herself as one of the best actors of her generation, and she imbues Allie with real human pain and sweetness, carefully unearthing (along with Braff’s sensitive direction) the transition from satisfied wife-to-be to haunted, damaged soul. Even just staring at the camera, tears glistening in her eyes, Pugh does more with a glance than some actors manage with a monologue.
As Allie descends through the traditional steps of a story like this, hacking off her hair and –– in a very Braff-ian display of emotional quirk –– eschewing cars for a BMX bike, Pugh and her director make sure that the character almost always maintains our sympathy, struggling to be, as the title suggests, a good person.
Freeman, meanwhile, is sometimes at the stage where he’s offered parts that hardly seem to challenge him and while conflicted former Daniel is indeed far from the most complicated character he’s played, the actor gives it his all, switching between twinkly compassion and frustration for those around him. Witness his stinging rebuke of Allie after she abandons Ryan during an unauthorized night in Manhattan.
Daniel fits Freeman well, and he works well off of Pugh, the two matching each other for emotional beats and enlivening even the staidest of circumstances, such as Daniel showing Allie his impressive model train setup.
It’s also worth noting that the movie is by no means devoid of humor, and there are some moments of levity, such as Daniel catching Ryan in bed with Quinn (Ignacio Diaz-Silverio), chasing the near-naked paramour out of the house, where he’s confronted by neighbor Belinda (Jackie Hoffman), who accosts Quinn with her garden hose while screeching that he’s a “f***boy”, or Shannon dipping in to her own vast well of comedy experience to make Diane a more entertaining character than the typical harried mother figure.
Writer/director Zach Braff on the set of 'A Good Person,' a Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures film. Credit: Jeong Park / Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures. © 2023 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures Inc. All Rights Reserved.
What problems does the movie have?
For all the powerful performances that the likes of Pugh, Freeman and Shannon deliver, there’s no avoiding the fact that ‘A Good Person’ has very little that is fresh or new to say about addiction or other life challenges.
Allie and Daniel’s stories plod along predictable arcs, and you can’t help but suppress a grimace of bored recognition when they fall into well-trodden behaviors, such as Allie flushing pills down the toilet or Daniel struggling with whether to unlock his gun from its safe when he learns Ryan is in trouble. If you’re going to utilize such established moments, at least find something truly fresh to do with them. Braff, sadly, just sticks with the expected and you can almost tick them off a checklist as they appear.
And while you can see the logic in having Freeman, an actor with a voice so iconic it has been parodied for years, narrate the opening moments and voice a letter his character writes late on, you find yourself wishing Braff had found something more compelling and revelatory than having him as Daniel comment on how life doesn’t work out as neatly as in the curated world of model train sets. You might as well have him parading around with a sandwich board that screams, “This Is A Metaphor”. It’s frustrating and tiresome.
There are important, humane things to be said about grief, but while the film offers a few of them, nothing here feels like it hasn’t been said, in better ways, a hundred times before. And for a movie promising complicated characters, it certainly wraps things up in the simplest fashion.
Braff’s latest has a couple of great performances but can’t completely escape some very obvious cliches. It might be called ‘A Good Person’, but it’s only a slightly above average movie.
‘A Good Person’ receives 6.5 out of 10 stars.
Florence Pugh as Allison in 'A Good Person,' directed by Zach Braff, a Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures film. Credit: Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures. © 2023 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Other Movies Similar to ‘A Good Person:’
- 'Clean and Sober' (1988)
- ‘When a Man Loves a Woman' (1994)
- 'Garden State' (2004)
- 'The High Cost of Living' (2011)
- 'Wish I Was Here' (2014)
- 'Going in Style' (2017)
- ‘Little Women' (2019)
- 'Midsommar' (2019)
- ‘Black Widow' (2021)
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'A Good Person' is produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Killer Films, RocketScience, Elevated Films, and Elevation Pictures, and is scheduled for release on March 24th.
