A Good Person ★★★

IT’S interesting, but perhaps not altogether surprising, how many films improve as you watch them.

The majority of straight, minimal location dramas are shot as close as possible to script order as possible, primarily to help the actors’ performances and the audience’s understanding of the narrative.

So, unless you are Anthony Hopkins or Meryl Streep for example, as an actor you’re going to grow with filming into the role.  That task is made doubly harder if the script isn’t the best to start with and the creators resist changes along the way.

Zach Braff’s latest film is a good example of this.

The former television actor wrote and directed A Good Person with Florence Pugh and Morgan Freeman in the lead roles.

Pugh plays Allison, an aspiring musician, engaged to her high school boyfriend, who causes a vehicle accident that results in a fatality with life-changing impacts on both their families.

A year later, depressed and spiralling downwards, Allison joins a therapy group where she is reunited with the father (Morgan) of one of the crash victims. The pair begin a difficult journey to men both their relationship and their families.

It’s a very well-intentioned film but doesn’t really take us down any new paths. Back to my point, at first the acting, even from Pugh and Morgan, suffers from being too melodramatic, also a fault of the script.

But as the film progresses the actors, particularly the supporting cast but also to an extent the leads, improve and end up delivering an emotionally satisfying final act.