Good Sam (2019 film)

Good Sam is a 2019 American drama film. The film is a Netflix Original based on Dete Meserve's book of the same name and follows the events of the happenings surrounding an unknown good Samaritan (“Good Sam”) who leaves cash on seemingly random doorsteps. The investigative news reporter Kate Bradley (Tiya Sircar) tries to find out Good Sam’s true identity.

Plot
Kate Bradley is a young reporter working on tragic stories, known as the "bummer beat." She lives in New York City. One day, she covers a big fire happening at an abandoned warehouse, and a firefighter rescues her from danger. She runs the story, but her boss reprimands her for putting her life on the line.

Kate goes to an event where her father is speaking. He is a politician and from their phone conversation beforehand, it is discovered that Kate has little interest or faith in politics. There, she meets Jack Hansen, a hedge fund manager who asks her out. She turns him down.

Kate goes to a staff meeting the next day, and her boss gives her a different kind of story to work on: a woman named Christina found $100,000 in cash in a bag with a sideways eight on it on her front doorstep. She believes a Good Samaritan gave it to her. It had no note attached or anything else there except for the bag of money. Kate goes to interview the woman, and along the way we find out that Kate is cynical and believes the person had an ulterior motive. Christina, however, is an optimist who sees the good in others. Bags of money begin to appear all over New York City, all on a doorstep of someone in need or someone who wants to help out a good cause, most without a note or anything else on them.

In the meantime, Kate discovers security camera footage of the man behind the money. She tracks the man who she thinks to be him down and finds out that he is actually Eric, the firefighter that saved her life at the big fire, but he claims he is not Good Sam, the nickname Kate and her boss have given the Good Samaritan. An intern interrupts a meeting one day, telling Kate that a man wants to meet with her, as he claims to be Good Sam. She calls his bluff, however, and he leaves. Kate's boss begins to wonder if the story is worth chasing after all.

Jack calls Kate while she is driving home from an interview and convinces her to go out with him. It goes smoothly. Many people have contacted Channel 12, the news channel Kate works for, about her Good Sam story, and one girl's video is aired. Sylvia, the girl in the video, has a mother who is sick and needs help getting money for medicine. Sylvia later receives money from Good Sam, and around this time, Kate begins receiving cryptic messages from an unknown number that tell her to meet up with Sylvia's family, so Kate goes for an interview.

In this time, Kate has developed a friendship and romantic interest in Eric. She and Eric begin to hang out, but she is still dating Jack.

As Kate fights to keep her story from being taken over by Susan, a more experienced reporter, she receives another cryptic message from an unknown caller I.D., this time telling her to meet up with Good Sam in a parking lot at night, alone and with no camera. There, Kate meets up with a man who claims to be Good Sam. She is shocked to find that Jack exits the car, claiming to be him.

Jack eventually agrees to do an exclusive interview with Channel 12 about being Good Sam. In it, Jack tells Kate that he just made a clever investment decision and wanted to do a social experiment with his money to see what others would do with it.

The two go out to eat afterwards, but somehow Channel 9 finds them and asks Jack about being Good Sam. His response sounds very similar to the one he gave Kate in their interview. Kate finds this suspicious.

Kate begins looking into the footage of interviews, especially her interview with Jack and his response to Channel 9. She discovers that they are word-for-word, and very well-rehearsed ("almost exactly in sync") and when she confronts him about it, he lamely explains that he may have "over-prepared" for his interview.

Kate takes Jack to see one of the people he donated money to, but during the interview he changes his story about how he found her. Still suspicious, Kate becomes nerved at his disinterest in her and her story. After going to a dinner party, Kate discovers that Jack is running for Congress. She puts two and two together, realizing he was just using a tactic for his campaign.

Kate receives a text from Eric, and goes to his house for dinner. After dinner, Kate notices a photograph of Eric, his brother, Patrick, and a man with a cap covering his face, whom Eric says was a friend of his brother. Eric goes on to explain that he hasn't sailed since his brother died on his boat because he feels responsible for what happened.

After further research, Kate discovers that Jack only gave away $100,000 to each of the last four people, meaning someone else was the original Good Sam. The network does more research into the first four candidates, Christina, Marie, Jesse and Faith.

It is realised that Jesse is from Maine, Camden Harbour - the same place Eric said he and his brother took their sailboat to see the 'capped' friend from the photograph. Eric was originally thought to be Good Sam, so Kate puts this link together and goes to see Jesse. Kate mentions she saw a picture of a man that looks like Jesse with Eric and Patrick Hayes. Jesse smiles as he recalls times with the Hayes brothers, saying he was Patrick's friend but was basically part of the family - also that he had done the wood work on the brothers' boat, the Crazy Eight - linking it to the image of the sideways number eight on the bags of money.

Kate goes on to call the other recipients - Faith used to work with Patrick when she was a paralegal, Christina was the baby sitter of Eric and Patrick, and Marie was Patrick's doctor. Kate realises Eric is the original Good Sam - and goes to see him. He confesses to being Good Sam, saying the money came from the insurance check given to him for the boat from his brother's accident. He felt the accident was his fault, and that he had failed his brother, so he decided to give the money away. He said the recipients were friends of his brothers that all made Patrick's life better, and thought they deserved it more than him. Kate asked him why he didn't just give the money straight to them, and Eric said he thought they would enjoy the money more if they weren't weighed down by where it came from. Kate comforts him and decides to keep his secret, telling him it is no longer about the story.

Back at Channel 12, Kate outs Jack and talks about how Good Sam inspired his recipients, Christina having bought her neighbour a car, Marie donating her whole amount to cancer research, Jesse giving a portion of his to a food bank and Faith creating a scholarship for someone in the same position as her.

The film concludes with a scene a month later, Kate and Eric are in Central Park, and he gives her a telescope, saying she'll need it when they go sailing. A young adult comes over and asks Kate to thank Good Sam as she and a bunch of other students received a scholarship for college. The scholarships seemingly came out of nowhere and the student is convinced it's Good Sam. Knowing it isn't him, Kate wants to follow up the story, now knowing how much Good Sam has inspired the city.

Reception
Good Sam received a 5.6/10 on IMDb with a so far undecided review on Rotten Tomatoes and has mixed reviews on other websites, including the Daily Dot and Wherever I Look. Decider simply declares: SKIP IT. So far, Good Sam has been praised for having a diverse cast with a lead who is good at her job, both as a reporter in the movie and an actress. It has been criticized for being too light on plot and having generic characters with little to no backstory. Overall, it has been dubbed a feel-good family movie and a waste of time.