Zach Braff wrote and directed A Good Person. The film follows Daniel, played by Morgan Freeman, who inevitably comes together with Allison, played by Florence Pug.
Allison was once a thriving young woman with a bright future. She then became involved in an unimaginable tragedy that killed Daniel’s daughter.
As grief-stricken, Daniel navigates, raising his teenage granddaughter while Allison seeks redemption. They discover that friendship, forgiveness, and hope can flourish in unlikely places.
Braff also wrote, directed and starred in Garden State, starring Natalie Portman. His films are poignant with lovely dialogue.
The rest of the cast includes Molly Shannon, Chinaza Uche and Celeste O’Connor.
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Allison is a young woman about to be married whose life devolves into addiction and confusion after the car she’s driving is involved in a deadly crash that kills her soon-to-be sister- and brother-in-law. Daniel is a former New Jersey police officer and recovering alcoholic who was to be Allie’s father-in-law before her engagement to Daniel’s estranged son, Nathan, was called off.
Meeting by chance at an AA meeting, Daniel and Allie begin an awkward but healing path to understanding. When Allie meets Daniel’s teenage granddaughter Ryan, orphaned by the car accident, she takes more complicated steps toward peace and forgiveness.
But as Allie — living with her mom, Diane, who has her red-wine-and-pill dependence — finds her need for painkillers getting more intense. Her decision-making abilities affected this story of redemption, friendship, and courage, which tackles other contemporary issues.
“I wanted to take on grief and addiction and a story about people standing back up after tragedy,” says Braff. “And I wanted to find a way to tackle it with some humor and heart.”
“I was eager to explore that idea and write a story about how we move on,” Braff continues. “I also wanted to write about how often the people that guide us in life or save us from ourselves are often not the people you’d necessarily expect to fill that role for us. That’s certainly been true in my own life.”
Braff’s experiences inform much of A Good Person, including losing several friends and family members since 2020, he says. “I wrote this script over the course of the pandemic, during which, like everyone else, I was feeling confused and scared. In the past four years, I’ve lost people close to me — a friend as well as the child of another friend to COVID; my father; my sister; and, recently, someone who took his own life, which happened after I wrote the screenplay, but that added to all of these feelings being in my consciousness.”
“I was looking to write about grief and especially how people can learn to stand up after grief,” explains Braff. “I wanted to write about not just my grief but the people I’ve watched who’ve been at the forefront of tragedy and how at first, it seemed impossible for them to move on. But then they were able to stand, then take steps forward, and slowly were able to function again.”
Says Pugh, “We all know when we’re being our best selves in our lives, and who made us into that. When reading Zach’s script, I leaned into the idea that Allison didn’t want to go there — she didn’t want to remember how good her life was before the accident. Something I felt the need to connect with in terms of the character was for Allison to feel — and in a way, enjoy — the pain and loss of what she once had as a form of self-destructive payment. She’s trying to feel, in some way, worse in order to make herself feel better.”
A Good Person also tackles how people can easily access and become dependent on opioids to numb physical and emotional pain. The pain this has brought to Americans of all types is part of the film’s tapestry, as is the prevalence of other kinds of addiction — and the importance of support groups like Alcoholics Anonymous.
