‘A Good Person’ Review: Florence Pugh Connects in an Addiction Drama That Marks a Return to Form (If You Like His Form) for Zach Braff
variety.comOwen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic The drama of addiction and recovery, as it takes place in the movies, tends to come at us like a series of rituals.
There’s the rule-by-rule, day-by-day protocol of 12-step programs (the meetings, the showing up, the sharing, the calls to sponsors); a lot of us may feel we know it well from movies, even if we’ve never personally undergone the experience.
There are the deeply engraved patterns of addiction itself: the highs, the lows, the cravings, the exploitation of friends and family members, the descent to the bottom, the grasping for the drink or the pill or the fix (or the one that isn’t there) and, in some cases, the criminal behavior.
The reaching out to save oneself is also a kind of ritual — one that some addicts would say God built into us. The ritual, in the case of this subject, extends to the audience.
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