They were indeed decent and nice characters, maybe a bit too nice to be believable but...
Firstly, I think they were put in the story, to show outsiders that were likeable people. As the movie goes, we come to sympathize with the two prisonners, to like and understand them, to feel for their difficulties. And it would have been a bit too easy and manichean, if all others characters were depicted as insensitive beasts. The sherif is a man who does his job, gets worried for next to come election and at a time claims to "hate" the men who make his work so difficult. But he is also a family man, has an "humanist" reputation and unlike the federal state agent, feels it cannot always be a mean to an end. At the end of the movie, the two convicts are pretty close anyway, so there was no real reason to let the killer dogs go rather than trying to get them alive.
As for Big Sam, he is a mysterious character. We do not know if he was released from jail or escaped like John and Noah but I suspect the latter. He clearly kept his past a secret from the townspeople and witnessing two men going through the same ordeals than he once did must have made him remember the luck he had to get out and the cruelty of prison life. He is not portrayed as "too lovable" either: when Noah asks him if he could break their chain as well as releasing them, he refuses and concludes "don't push your luck too hard".
So, human and compassionate, yeah. But not typically Hollywood. Otherwise, the sherif would have been no more than a ruthless man of the law. And Big Sam would have gone through a teary tirade about his past.
" You ain't running this place, Bert, WILLIAMS is!" Sgt Harris
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