MGM
At this point, the gentle rumble of Morgan Freeman’s omniscient voiceover could almost be called a genre of its own. The legendary actor brings his remarkable seriousness to the opening series of A Good Person, another New Jersey drama from Garden State writer/director Zach Braff. The film begins with an obvious metaphor about model trains that is hammered into the ground very quickly, along with a few on many other themes and storylines. With model railways you can “construct a world in which the hobbyist plays the almighty creator,” says Freeman, before he seals it with the tongue-in-cheek clincher: “In life, of course, nothing is nearly as clean and tidy.”
If only filmmaking was more like model railroading, Braff could have kept A Good Man from getting so wildly off the rails.
The film centers on 26-year-old Allison or Ali, played with unbridled bravery by Florence Pugh, who finds herself in the clutches of opioid addiction after surviving a fatal car accident in which she was the driver. Ali had a bright future before the accident, as evidenced in a blissful engagement party capped off with her serious rendition of The Velvet Underground’s “If You Close the Door.” (For what it’s worth, Pugh has a beautiful voice and appears to play the piano himself.) As she sings, her fiancé Nathan (Chinaza Uche) looks at her with uncomplicated glee, though it will be the last time.
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While driving into town with her sister-in-law and husband to try on wedding dresses, Ali glances at her Maps app before realizing a construction vehicle pulls into traffic. Waking up in pain and begging for more morphine, she receives the tragic news that she is the sole survivor.
The film then skips a year to find Ali living with her mother Diane (Molly Shannon) at her childhood home in West Orange and battling an uncomfortable addiction to Oxycontin. “We said we’d stop her,” says Diane before washing down Ali’s last few pills. As she panics, cries, and rummages through the medicine cabinet, the film suddenly swings wildly into addiction-melodrama territory. Wearing a sloppy cardigan and a choppy bob she’s cut, she rides her tiny little kid-sized bike to the pharmacy.
Shut up by the pharmacist and a childhood friend who works in the pharmaceutical industry, she drinks tequila at a local dive bar, where she is recognized by two former high school classmates. She feels an in and asks if they have any pills. The anachronistic scene takes a somber turn when scruffy Mark (Alex Wolff) cruelly forces her to say “I’m a fucking junkie” before helping her out. The whole thing feels forced and cliche, as does the image of Ali smoking crack in an alley, which she does after being told “it’s all the same.”
After all this strenuous build-up, the film somehow finds its pace, or at least gets to the heart of the story. The harrowing bar experience helped Ali realize she has a problem, and she timidly wanders into a local 12-step meeting. She is surprised to find Nathan’s father, Daniel (Morgan Freeman), who is now burdened with raising his orphaned 16-year-old granddaughter, Ryan (Celeste O’Connor). Daniel conceals his bitterness towards Ali and gently urges her to stay for the meeting, speaking from his experience as a sober alcoholic. (Although there are too many other odd choices in Braff’s script for it to be irrelevant to point out, he does gloss over the fact that NA and AA are two different programs.)
The centerpiece of the film becomes Daniel and Ali’s healing friendship as they bond through stories about Nathan, insights into raising rebellious teenage girls and, of course, model trains. Although the film is meant to be Ali’s journey, Braff Daniel tells a whole backstory about his father’s alcoholism, his own failures as a father and – what else? – his love for model railways. “So much of my life was out of control,” he says from the basement where he built a miniature replica of the entire town of West Orange. “Down here I decide.”
Although their relationship is by far the most interesting in the film, “A Good Person” loses whatever sense it made when the focus splits so dramatically between Daniel and Ryan. Though Pugh valiantly toils through the melancholic beats of Braff’s melodrama, there are too many other characters and plot threads for her to do more than push the story forward. After a messy trip to town to save Ryan from a spooky party in Williamsburg tests the limits of their friendship, it’s Daniel, not Ali, who delivers the titular line, “I’m a good person.” Whatever journey this confused character was carrying was co-opted, albeit by a very kind elderly gentleman. Ultimately, the film seems as light and synthetic as a model railway.
Grade: C
MGM brings “A Good Person” to theaters on Friday, March 24th.