The Collegio Pittsburg's student voice since 1916
A Good Person
Himika Akram reporter
I would say “A Good Person” is by far the most power-packed performance for both leading cast members Morgan Freeman as Daniel and Florence Pugh as Allison. This movie is about drug addiction, regret and finally the path to healing.
If you expect to watch something extremely powerful and disturbing like “Requiem for A Dream,” then hold on. This movie directed by Zach Barff took a softer route in terms of its unfolding of events; even though there are lots of wounded souls in this story. It did not have those strong concepts such as illusion, or self-deception, or extreme level of solitude as “Requiem for a Dream” depicted.
The movie opens with a happy scene of Allison and Nathan getting engaged. But that moment of happiness was only transitory. Allison, along with her would-be sister and brother-in-law was driving on the New Jersey Turnpike on the way to have a look on her wedding dress, met a severe accident due to distracted driving, which killed both of her in-laws, and she was severely injured. She gained back her consciousness in the hospital room and got to know about the news.
After one year, we get see her life is jumbled up. By this time, she broke up with Nathan, and started living with her mom. She gets too dependent on the Oxycontin, which her doctor prescribed her; her mom found out about it and flushes down her remaining pills to the loo. She then goes to the bar and creates a scene there. On the other side, there is Nathan’s orphaned niece Ryan, who is obviously having a challenging time adjusting to her life in the absence of both of her parents. She lives with her grandpa, ex-cop Daniel. Because once he himself was an abusive parent to Nathan, he tries to pay for that mistake now by taking Ryan under his wings. He plays with an extensive basement train set, which helps him as a therapeutic pastime. However, his strenuous relationship with his son and granddaughter sent him to AA.
That is where he met Alison, who had just started her session there. Even though Daniel thinks she was the one to be blamed for accident, but somewhere she felt bad for the girl and put his anger aside and focused on helping her on her journey of healing.
The dialogues of this movie were brilliant and both Florence and Morgan did proper justice to deliver those dialogues; In fact, their extremely powerful acting made those dialogues even stronger. Florence was impeccably convincing as a drug-addicted person, whose world surrounding her is continuously shrinking with despair. And there is nothing new to say about the legendary Morgan Freeman. The tagline of the movie might sound a bit corny, but regardless, I loved it- “Sometimes we find hope where we least expect it,” because I genuinely believe in it, even experienced this several times in my life.
The 2 mentally battered people who have been through a lot, one had to let her fiancé go away, along with her dreams, from her life. While the other lost her kid and son-in-law; their fate connected them together in the form of “a good person,” which both are at heart. The only thing I felt could have been better was those indie-acoustic soundtracks. Other than that, this movie would be a 7/10 according to my rating.