Metacritic reviews

It could be that Franco and Hudson, while not phoning it in, bring personae that are just too familiar/conventional to spark a high level of viewer involvement.

There's probably enough content here to warrant a three-hour movie but Good People is only 90 minutes long.

Danish director Henrik Ruben Genz (“Terribly Happy”) can’t hide his cards and rarely even tries to. He’s stuck with a script that has “Promise you won’t kill us,” maybe the silliest line ever uttered to a murderer, but that features some dandy threats, some by the villain who doesn’t drive the Jaguar.

James Franco again, more subdued and less hokey than usual, this time in something called Good People, the kind of routine thriller they used to show on Thursday and Friday nights before the big Saturday double features, back in the good old studio years when the marquees changed every two days.

Good People follows a familiar thriller template without managing to be particularly compelling.

Both stars are in agreeable if uncharacteristically muted form, doing little to distinguish Genz’s pic from any amount of formula-following filler in the same B-movie ballpark.

Good People might have been better titled "Dumb People", or at least "People Who Have Never Seen A Movie In Their Entire Lives."

What transpires in this adequately acted, uninventive film fails to add any fresh twists to the cash-vs.-conscience formula.

It only overcomes its deficiencies and gains a modicum of entertainment value precisely when it commits to its illogical storylines and exaggerated plot twists.

Good People goes from being simply pedestrian to outright preposterous without batting an eye.