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As a parent, you often find yourself making difficult decisions to do what you feel is best for your child. And in The Good Mother, a grieving mom sets out to uncover the truth—and to do the right thing for the family that she still has left.
The Good Mother stars Hilary Swank as Marissa, a journalist whose already unstable life is shaken when she gets the news that her estranged addict son, Michael, has been killed. After the funeral, she finds herself connecting with Michael’s pregnant girlfriend, Paige (Olivia Cooke), who insists that they’d been working on getting clean and starting a new life with their new family. Determined to uncover the truth about what really happened to Michael, Paige and Marissa follow a path that leads them to a world of drugs and deadly secrets.
Though Marissa always saw Paige as a part of Michael’s problem, their grief brings them together—and when Paige finds herself in danger, Marissa takes her in. Swank’s Marissa is a haunted, heartbroken woman—one who’s lost her husband and now her son, too—and, in her grief, she’s traded everything she once cared about for a drinking problem and a job she hates. But as Paige sets out to find out who’s responsible for Michael’s death, she slowly helps Marissa find things to care about again—whether it’s finding her son’s killer or preparing for her first grandchild.
The two-time Oscar winner manages to depict her character’s grief and regret, capturing the emotions of a woman who’s been forced to make a whole lot of difficult decisions. Unfortunately, though, she doesn’t get a lot to work with. The characters and their stories aren’t fully developed—and the film ends up focusing less on the pain and emotion of Marissa’s story and more on a rather typical amateur investigation into drugs and corruption. It really is a missed opportunity—because instead of developing a moving story about a mother wrestling with her son’s addiction and ultimate death, it slogs through a search for answers before coming to a rather unsurprising and anticlimactic conclusion.
The Good Mother really had a lot to work with here. It could have been an emotional story about a complex character, played by a talented star—the kind of movie you’d expect to see during Award Season. But instead of giving viewers depth and drama, it ends up being just another forgettable whodunit.
You can join the investigation when The Good Mother arrives in theaters on September 1, 2023.
Listen to the review on Reel Discovery:
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