The Good Lie

This past weekend finally got around to seeing the film The Good Lie staring Reese Witherspoon. The film is directed by Philippe Falardeau (known for the Oscar nominated foreign film Monsieur Lazhar) and is a dramatic account of a group of the Lost Boys of Sudan who resettle in United States.

Reese Witherspoon plays an employment agent who is responsible for finding these young men employment and who become engaged in their lives as they encounter America after their own tremendous experience in eastern Africa as they escaped death in the wide spread civil war.

Like the documentary God Grew Tired of Us (2005) [discussed on this blog in 2008] this film reminds us of the incredibly true story and creates a unique opportunity to reflect on aid, the American experience, global needs, and the power of survival.

The story is weighty, but told with a gentle and honest hand. Performance are relatively strong, outside of Witherspoons you have a compelling performances by Ger Duany, Kuoth Wiel, and Corey Stoll.

The film never drags with great pacing at is rolls through it's various acts. The film's limited gross in the United States in it's fall 2014 release (just under three million domestically) was surely a disappointment, but many films which did much better at the box office hardly touched the importance of the story told here.