Good People (2014) James Franco, Kate Hudson, Sam Spruell, Tom Wilkinson Movie Review

Good People (2014)   3/53/53/53/53/5


James Franco and Kate Hudson in Good People (2014)

Shallow Grave Meets Home Alone

Anna (Kate Hudson) and Tom Wright (James Franco) have played by the rules all their lives and what has it got them; a dilapidated inherited house they are about to lose, an eviction notice on the place they rent and continuing issues with trying to have children. It is why when after the man who rented their basement dies and they find he had a bag hidden stuffed with money they decide to keep the money. Trouble is that the dead man was involved in the dealing of liquid heroine and that means Tom and Anna not only having DI John Halden (Tom Wilkinson) sniffing around but the deadly Jack Witkowski (Sam Spruell) who wants the money and also Khan (Omar Sy) the liquid heroine side of the mess.

There is one problem with "Good People"; that is that this features such a regular storyline that even a nail fired in to a bad guys head which then goes in as he falls down is unable to make this anything more than just okay. I have literally lost count of the number of movies I have watched where we have a good guy or couple who stumble across some dirty money and then having to deal with cops and bad guys who come looking for it. As such whilst we have a storyline which features a couple of Americans living in London, a drug dealer from France as well as detective who has a personal reason for bringing an end to the drug dealers it all ends up routine.

But then you get a sense that "Good People" was all about the shall we say "Home Alone" part of the movie as after being beaten, forced to run and much more we have Anna and Tom deciding to stand their ground by booby trapping the house that Tom is renovating. And to be honest parts of this "Home Alone" part are quite good but really what I mean is that the violence and gore perks up what is otherwise quite a routine movie. How routine, well Kate Hudson and James Franco put in two anonymous performances the type which you forget about once the movie is over.

What this all boils down to is that "Good People" is simply okay, a completely typical movie with little in the way of anything which is memorable and only really pepped up by a violent side towards the end of the movie.


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