A Good Person

The second movie in my double feature at the Broadway last night was A Good Person and, even though the movie itself is a little uneven, the performances make it worth a watch.  Allison (Florence Pugh) is happily engaged to Nathan (Chinaza Uche) and is successful in her career but her world is destroyed when the car she is driving is involved in an accident which kills Nathan's sister Molly (Nichelle Hines) and her husband Jason (Toby Onwumere) and leaves their daughter Ryan (Celeste O'Connor) an orphan.  One year later, Allison's life is in a downward spiral after she ends her engagement and becomes addicted to the Oxycontin prescribed for her injuries.  When she finally decides to get sober, she attends an AA meeting where she encounters Molly and Nathan's father Daniel (Morgan Freeman), a recovering alcoholic who is struggling with the responsibility of raising his granddaughter and fears a relapse.  Both Nathan and Ryan offer her a way forward through their unlikely friendship but it is only when she is able to forgive herself that she can deal with her trauma, guilt, and addiction.  There is an incredibly heavy-handed metaphor involving model trains with figurines that can be controlled unlike real people who make a mess of their lives and this sets the tone for what is to come.  The themes are overly familiar, the plot sometimes descends into melodrama (one scene in particular in the third act is completely overwrought), and the runtime is definitely too long (I thought it was over three different times only to have another coda appear) but both Pugh and Freeman give unbelievably affecting performances (especially when they are interacting with each other).  Molly Shannon brings a lot of pathos as a mother who doesn't know how to help her daughter and Alex Wolff has a short scene as Allison's former classmate that is probably my favorite in the whole movie.  I would recommend this but it is definitely one you can wait to see when it streams.