A Good Person

Zach Braff wrote this during the pandemic lockdown for Florence Pugh, his partner at the time, while carrying his own grief: he had lost his sister and his father in 2018 and his close friend Nick Cordero in 2020. It opens at an engagement party. Ally works in pharmaceuticals, plays piano and sings, and performs the Velvet Underground's After Hours. Then a bulldozer on a road-construction site lifts its shovel into the highway and there is a serious crash. The engagement ends, and Ally becomes addicted to opioids during her recovery. Morgan Freeman plays Daniel, the man who was going to be her father-in-law. His model railway is the film's best metaphor: a controllable, miniature, entirely invented world. The two meet at a recovery meeting, and nobody here forgives anybody easily. Who it is for: viewers who want addiction shown as a daily negotiation rather than a spectacle of collapse. Who it is not for: anyone wanting restraint. Braff pushes the feeling too hard in places, and the resolution is tidier than the story has earned.