Movie Review - Good People

Good People (2014)

Starring James Franco, Kate Hudson, Tom Wilkinson, Omar Sy, Sam Spruell, and Anna Friel

Directed by Henrik Ruben Genz

***This film is currently streaming on Netflix***

The solid cast in Good People is the sole reason this flick was added to my Netflix streaming queue as I had never even known it existed, let alone was released to a small amount of theaters back in September 2014.  Then again, perhaps there was a reason I'd never heard of it as this one is pretty much as generic as they come.

Tom and Anna Wright (James Franco and Kate Hudson) are two Americans living in England and unfortunately having a rough go of it with Tom's fixer-upper, flipping houses business falling flat.  With an eviction notice on his doorstep, Tom is at a loss as to how to keep things afloat when the tenant living in the basement of his and Anna's flat dies.  Upon cleaning up his things, the couple uncover a large stash of money and are faced with the moral question of whether to keep their discovery or hand it over to John Halden (Tom Wilkinson), the lead detective who is investigating their tenant's ties with drug dealers.

Obviously, Tom and Anna are the "good people" in this scenario, but we all know the saying that "bad things happen to good people" and the couple find themselves caught in a triangulated spider web with multiple bad guys trying to lay claim to the money hidden in their basement.  Unfortunately, as the film progresses, we don't find ourselves caring for the couple's plight mainly because they're given so many opportunities to save themselves from harm's way that their incessant need to keep the cash seems foolishly oblivious.  Franco and Hudson attempt to let us in to their characters' intentions, but the actors can't persuade us that their actions are anything other than to create reasons for a movie like this to exist rather than be steeped in any semblance of reality.  The film's denouement devolves into a Home Alone style house of horrors moment that provokes laughter rather than creating tension.

While I have many qualms with Good People, it certainly isn't the worst barely released theatrical film I've seen.  I can't say I recommend it, however, but it kept my interest even though it was utterly ridiculous thanks to a very short running time (which is yet another reason why I even watched it in the first place).

The RyMickey Rating:  C-