A Good Person: Film Review
A Good Person, the script Zach Braff wrote in lockdown for Florence Pugh, is an impressively written and performed addiction drama.
The film follows Allison (Pugh), whose life is turned upside down when she is involved in a car accident. She has become addicted to OxyContin, insisting she is still in pain from her injuries. But her pain is psychological – she wants to escape from reality. Allison has to face up to what happened when she bonds with Daniel (Morgan Freeman) at an AA meeting.
This character study is serious, dark and heavy as it takes a good hard look at the opioid addiction crisis in America and shows how difficult it is to come off of OxyContin. At first, I thought it was going to be too much, thanks to an early scene in which Pugh and Molly Shannon as her mum Diane basically keep shouting at each other.
Thankfully, that’s not the case, as Braff cleverly uses humour throughout to lighten the load and make sure we don’t go for too long without some comic relief. In fact, his script is really well written and deftly balances the humour and the drama. It definitely still leans more towards serious (it’s an addiction drama after all) but there are some much-needed moments of lightness in there.
Pugh has nailed intense roles like this before so I never had any doubt that she would manage to do so again. She just does not miss! I feel like I say this every time, but A Good Person is her best performance yet. She is so convincing as an addict with nothing to lose. She hates herself and doesn’t see the point of getting clean – until she turns a corner. Allison makes some really awful life choices but Pugh humanises and grounds her so you can understand why she’s behaving that way.
Freeman is reliable as ever as her co-lead and they have a unique dynamic that I was interested in seeing play out. I was particularly impressed with Chinaza Uche‘s deeply felt performance as Allison’s ex Nathan and Celeste O’Connor as his angsty and rebellious niece Ryan.
Although it is slightly too long and quite a hard watch, I really liked A Good Person and was once again floored by Pugh’s performance.
In cinemas from Friday 24th March and Sky Cinema from 28th April