Three badly hurt people help each other in “A Good Person.” Writer/director Zach Braff anchors the film in tender-hearted, touching performances by Morgan Freeman and Florence Pugh. Both play characters who struggle to find a way forward after devastating failures with tragic consequences.
It is more formally conventional than his first film, “Garden State,” and thankfully less self-indulgent than his second film, “Wish I Was Here.” “A Good Person” benefits from the same shrewd sense of detail and character evident in both, taking on ambitious themes of addiction, abuse, abandonment, overwhelming grief, and finding a way to forgive the unforgivable, even when it means forgiving yourself. And, as the title suggests, what it means to be a good person.
Pugh plays Alison, a light-hearted young woman who dances along the surface of life and does not think too deeply about her choices. She is happily engaged to Nathan (a very appealing Chinaza Uche). She is making a lot of money as a sales rep for a pharma company, convincing herself that her work is not immoral because the only drug she is pushing is prescribed for a skin disease.
One day, Alison drives her future sister- and brother-in-law to the city to help her pick out her wedding dress. For a few seconds, she takes her eyes off the road to look at the map on her phone near a construction site. She is unable to avoid a collision with a backhoe. Alison is injured, and her passengers are killed.
A year later, the teenage daughter of the couple who was killed, Ryan (a lovely performance from Celeste O’Connor), lives with her grandfather, Daniel (Morgan Freeman). That adjustment is challenging for both of them as Ryan is hostile and acting out. Alison lies on her mother’s couch all day in a fog of oxycontin addiction, trying to numb her pain, emotional and physical. Her engagement is broken. Her mother, Diane (Molly Shannon), is running out of patience, and her doctors are cutting off her prescriptions.