Movie Review: A Good Person

 

Michael's Movie Grade: B

A very effective, if flawed, tearjerker. 

This is one of those films that you know simply would not work as well if it had lesser actors playing the main roles. However luckily this movie has Florance Pugh and Morgan Freeman in the main roles. Florance Pugh is personally one of my favorite current actresses. Even at a really young age, she has proven herself to be equally wonderful whether she appears in a period drama, horror movie, superhero film, thriller or a tearjerker like this. Every film she is in is simply better because she is in it and that is certainly the case here. Her character here is one who is dealing with a lot of guilt from having been the driver, when a car got in a car crash and killed two of her friends. She too is hurt in the accident and put on pain killers to which she soon becomes addicted. What makes this work so well is that you can simply see the pain in her eyes through so much of this. Even during scenes that should come off as overly melodramatic, there is a humanity to her performance that can make it feel painfully real. This is because she makes us care about and feel for this character every second she is on screen. Adding to her impressive performance is that Pugh not only sings in this movie but writes a couple of her own songs too. Not surprisingly she is quite good at this too. Of course, Morgan Freeman is also always wonderful in every movie he is in and that is certainly true here. His character is also going through a lot of pain and once again his performance is what makes this feel real and heartbreaking even when the movie gets overly melodramatic. The two make an unlikely pair of friends but you always believe the friendship between them and this is heavily because of the great chemistry between the two stars. The story itself has it problems but there are definitely parts of this script that work quite well. For instance I love that this script never tones down the characters' actions in order to make them more likable. In reality, people who are hurting and who have addictions can act selfish and can do things that make them hard to like at times. This is fully on display here and instead of hurting the film, it actually makes the characters feel more relatable and like real people. This also leads to another thing I like about this film, that it asks a wonderful question that it does not simplify. This question is whether a person who has done terrible things can still be a good person. This is a wonderful idea for a movie like this to explore and it does a quite good job (even if not perfect) of exploring this idea and allowing us to do some internal introspection as we watch. There are also some emotional scenes in this film that are really moving and times when this movie made me tear up a little. 

This movie does definitely have its faults though. One is that the humor often feels out of place when it shows up. While humor is often important in a tearjerker like this, as it can relieve the audience and keep the film from becoming too depressing, humor has too be used at the right moments. Here it often isn't and there are times when the humor starts to appear that simply feel like the completely wrong moments. This is not helped by the fact that much of the humor is not really that funny. A lot of the jokes fall flat and the ones the work often times provide more of a smile than a real laugh. The main problem with this movie though is that the plot is often overly melodramatic and relies too much on conveniences. The plot often times hinges on little coincidences that often seem really forced. For a movie that is supposed to be realistic these coincidences can take us out of the movie and go beyond our suspension of disbelief. There is also a truly awful scene with our main character running into two men, she knew in high school that is full of terrible dialogue that does not sound at all like people really talk. 

Despite this movie's faults, the performances where wonderful and there were times when this film moved me to near tears. Because of this I can easily recommend this movie.