Where I Watched It: MGM Plus
English Audio Description Provided By: Deluxe
Narrated by: Leslie S.
There’s a good film buried in A Good Person, which is the latest effort from Zach Braff. I was able to see that thanks to MGM Plus starting to offer a limited amount of titles with audio description. It’s always nice to see another streaming service move into the audio description community.
A Good Person revolves around a young woman (Florence Pugh), whose life is thrown into total hell after a car accident that kills her best friend and her best friend’s fiancé. A lot of that has to do with the guilt she feels over having been the driver, even though for the duration of the film, she refuses to acknowledge any wrongdoing. The other half of the story is a retired police officer (Morgan Freeman), who was the father of that best friend, and is now left raising her daughter. Teenagers are complicated.
It’s a very melodramatic film that deals with grief and addiction in very real ways. Freeman’s cop is a recovering alcoholic, and Pugh’s character got addicted to oxy as a pain medication following the crash. It’s how they meet, and Freeman takes this as a sign that he’s supposed to help Pugh through her addiction but it gets far more complicated.
Florence Pugh delivers one hell of a performance here, and if this film was just a little better, this could ahave been a contender for her. But, like last year where she starrred in two films that didn’t work, she once again is the best part about this film. Freeman is a classic, but with his library of performances, it’s hard to say this is near the top for him. Celeste O’Connor and molly Shanon both deliver nice supporting turns as the granddaughter and Pugh’s mother, respectively.
The problem with this film is in Zach’s direction, which is odd because I like his previous works. He chooses to show his hand early on, which makes it impossible to care for or relate to Florence Pugh. She remains irredeemable the whole movie because we keep waiting for her to take some responsibility. While I do accept her “I was using maps”, she was using her phone while driving, yet refuses to accept any blame. Braff chooses to show us that moment. We see her become a distracted driver, and we know that is the reason she crashes the car. We spend the whole film watching her play the victim, and I think the experience would have been so much stronger had we NOT seen that, and it instead came out later in an emotional moment between Freeman and Pugh, the former has the entire police report memorized. If we had waited until later, we could have felt more empathy for Pugh and her survivor’s guilt and subsequent addiction. instead, she’s the perpetual out of place villain making more bad choices.
And just when the film seems like it might end on the right note, Braff goes too far, and has a final scene that is wholly unnecessary. It’s like he felt like this had to be the present wrapped in some nice bow, but presents are never about the packaging, but rather what’s inside. And by tagging on that last five minutes, he ruins much of what he worked to build.
If you want an ideal experience, skip the first five and last five minutes. If you pick up after the car accident, and leave a litttle early, this movie gets much better.
The audio description did a good job of highlighting so many little things throughout the film. One thing I found fascinating, was after Pugh snorted some Oxy, it pointed out that there was a blue powdered ring around her nose, which I didn’t know anyone had ever gotten in any other project involving a character with an oxy addiction. I also enjoy the little things, like a dinner sequence where Pugh is holding “the crust” of a pizza, which lets me know she’s already eaten. There’s also a lot of detail to a little village that Freeman is building in his basement, which is part of that unnecessary final moments.
Also, the audio description is necessary, as there is a fair amount of texting going on in this film. I can’t see those texts, so I was glad to know what they were.
An imperfect film, and Braff’s worst effort as a director. But, much like Pugh did last year with Don’t Worry Darling, she puts this film on her back and drags it across the finish line. if you are a fan of hers, you owe it to yourself to watch her in this. She’s fantastic, and makes it worth the price.
Final Grade: B-