Good People

I don't understand people these days. This is well directed, well acted thriller worth seeing. Intense, dramatic and with great cast, both good and villians.

If you have watched your share of thrillers, more likely than not the premise of "Good People" - ordinary people stumbling across a large amount of cash belonging to criminals - will be somewhat familiar to you. It certainly seemed familiar to me. But it's not just the premise that's familiar, but also how the movie plays out, with its various characters and supposed plot twists and turns. The climax comes as no surprise, since it's telegraphed very early in the movie as to what will happen and where it will happen.

Still, I must give credit where credit is due. The acting by all the participants is professional and effective; the bad guys do come across as acceptably nasty pieces of work. The movie also has reasonable production values for a movie that didn't have a megabudget. And the story, though very familiar and predictable, does go from scene to scene at a fairly brisk pace and leaves no lulls. So if you don't mind seeing the same story and characters all over again, you'll probably find this movie a fairly well crafted retread.

A couple of Americans (Kate Hudson, James Franco) experiencing hard financial times head over to jolly old England to make a go of it. I'm pretty sure that makes no sense but we'll pretend in this fictional world that it does. So the couple are renting a room to a drug addict criminal who dies. They find a stash of money in the ceiling and, like everybody in every movie that has used this plot before, they throw common sense out the window and decide to start spending the money. Of course, some bad dudes come looking for the loot. Now the couple is in trouble and the only person who can help them is the dogged detective (Tom Wilkinson) who won't let the case go. Which is pretty much every movie detective ever. As you can see this thing is riddled with clichés and a formulaic plot. To compensate for the lack of originality we have ample doses of violence and a nice ass shot from Kate Hudson.

It's all put together adequately but it's as stale as month-old bread. Stupid people doing stupid things is the backbone of this movie. The best part is the last thirty minutes. Kate Hudson says "Guns are for pussies" because they have rigged their house Home Alone-style to fight the baddies, which is too ridiculous to miss. I love when the one criminal sees the other one impaled and asks "Are you alright?" Priceless. It's worth watching once, I suppose, if you're bored. But most people will have seen this done before and better many times over the years. There are some unintentionally funny moments, which bumps it up a notch.

Action packed fast moving drama with good acting young JamesFranco, Katie Hudson and Tom Wilkinson.

The creative team behind this film is definitely promising. Director Henrik Ruben Genz is the Danish film and television director, known for his film Terribly Happy (2008) and work on the series The Bridge and The Killing in the original Danish version. Kelly Masterson has signed two film scripts. Maybe I was wrong to set high expectations, because Good People is only fair, average thriller with a story seen a million of times. Tom (Franco) and Anna (Hudson) are an American couple in financial problems. They move to London to the house Tom inherited. Since their earnings are not enough for renovation so they rent a room to Ben, suspicious type. After he's gone, Tom and Anna will find the mysterious stash of more than 200,000 pounds. But as we all know big money is not without owner. And so it begins... The problem is that we have already seen that story, and Good People does not bring anything new. Even the adaptation of the novel by Marcus Sakey is kind of awkward. The dialogues are poor. Acting is not bad. Visual effects are on higher level. The pace is easy, which certainly reinforces the impression of weirdness and "suspense", although we know all too well the sequence of events. Good People is correct thriller. Watchable, but really nothing more than that.