Movie Review - A Good Person
Allison and Nathan were engaged to be married. Allison and Nathan’s sister and her husband are on a shopping trip to try on wedding dresses when Allison, texting while driving, crashes into a backhoe in a work zone and Nathan’s sister and brother in law are killed in the crash. Allison sustains a head injury and is prescribed the opioid pain killer, Oxycontin, to which she becomes addicted.
Nathan’s father, Daniel, played by Morgan Freeman, is a Vietnam vet and in recovery from alcoholism helps Allison get into recovery. The plot is thickened by Daniel raising his granddaughter orphaned by the crash in which her mother and father were killed.
Allison goes from a successful, happy young woman at the beginning of her adult life to a suicidal, extremely distressed woman whose life appears to be ruined. Is there any possibility of redemption entangled in such a web of painful and conflicted relationships? How does a person manage such a tragedy of being the party to the deaths of two people and then caught up in addiction to a substance meant to treat the pain? How do the other people involved in such a situation deal with their very conflicted thoughts and feelings about the person at the center of the situation which has caused such life shattering losses?
The question explored is this film is “given the enormity of loss and suffering subjected on this family is there any reason to hope for the creation of a satisfying and fulfilling lives thereafter?
This film is distressful to watch due to the subject matter and yet the performances are excellent and the story development very credible. The film may leave the viewer with the knowledge that there is reason to believe that things can become better in the end if we can endure the pain to get there with the support and good will of people we meet along the way.