What The Reviews Have To Say About Ben Affleck's Gangster Flick 'Live By Night'
Ben Affleck won't be stopped in his quest to direct and star in all the movies, and his next effort — gangster movie Live By Night — arrives in theaters today. The film, which is based on a lauded novel by Dennis Lehane, tells the story of the rise of gangster Joe Coughlin (Affleck) through the criminal underworld during the 1920s and '30s.
So where does Live By Night fall on the Affleck Scale between Gigli and Good Will Hunting? Here's what the reviews have to say:
Pretty Low On The Scale, Unfortunately
You can feel the makers of "Live by Night" working at cross-purposes: the writer has overburdened the movie with narration upon which the director relies too heavily, with an actor holding back so much that neither those voiceovers nor either of his on-screen romances ever register. That Ben Affleck is that actor, that writer, and that director doesn't help a bit.
[TheWrap]
Labelling "Live By Night" a disaster is a little uncharitable; the baggy drama is perhaps more painfully mediocre than full-blown folly, but it's close. Mostly phoned-in and flat, "Live By Night" possesses none of the killer instinct that usually fuels the ruthless crime drama, narratively or otherwise.
In Addition To Acting And Directing, Affleck Wrote The Screenplay… Which Maybe He Shouldn't Have Done
Affleck the screenwriter seems to have dumped the story onto the kitchen table and pushed it around like dough, hoping for some shape to emerge. It resists.
Somewhere inside the 128-minute Live by Night is a reasonably solid 168-minute movie struggling to get out. No, that's not a typo: You can sense the contours of an absorbing story as writer/director/star Ben Affleck's slapdash and fragmented assemblage limps along. Most of the pieces are there, but they remain pieces.
And He Runs Into Trouble Directing Himself
A movie gangster can — and should — be a morally complex figure; it's not like they all have to be Tony Montana. But watching "Live by Night," it's hard to shake the feeling that Affleck, who wrote the movie as well as directing it, was drawn to the material because it allowed him to express something personal — his desire, perhaps, to hold onto things of ultimate value (e.g., his family) in the face of his own propensity to walk on the wild side. He has tried to craft a moral tale of a gangster's journey, but in "Live by Night" what that comes down to is that he's telling the story of a vicious hoodlum who is actually a Boy Scout.
[Variety]
Affleck should be perfect for this role — understated, not too mawkish — but he's developed an odd weakness when he directs himself. In general, the actor works best in roles where he lets himself look a little foolish or silly… [but] he spends so much of the movie either glowering or suppressing a glower with a thin smile, even as the story conforms to the aw-shucks Affleck persona from The Town and Argo. Like those past Affleck characters, Coughlin is put-upon, more or less irresistible and, if not unbreakable, strangely difficult to defeat.
[AV Club]
Joe is a smoother kind of operator, but one being slowly torn apart under the pressure of his compiling sins and the need to make a safer, better life for his beloved, and it's a dramatic arc that neither Affleck nor the film conveys effectively enough to give the inevitably grisly climax any kind of lasting weight. It's a leading turn that isn't as dynamic as many of the performances surrounding it.
It's A Gangster Movie — And Not Much More
Live By Night… plays like an animatronic gangster movie, with lots of pretty pieces you've seen before and nothing particularly engaging about them. The saga of a WWI veteran who turns to a life of crime, his exploits stretching from Boston to Florida and eventually Cuba, the movie plays like a gorgeous pastiche of genre elements in search of a purpose.
Live by Night is barely breathing. A slow, stubbornly serious period picture, it's Ben Affleck's attempt to bring back the old Warner Bros. gangster films, with him stepping in for Jimmy Cagney. It's got Prohibition and speakeasies, flappers and Tommy guns. It still shoots blanks.
The Costuming And Period Detail Are Top-Notch, Though
If clothes made the film, Ben Affleck's pedestrian film version of the 2012 Dennis Lehane crime novel "Live by Night" would, in gangster terms, qualify as a made movie. Credit where it's due: costume designer Jacqueline West delivers the lapels, fedoras and sleek 1920s and early '30s skirts in serious style, while production designer Jess Gonchor matches her work with lavishly detailed interiors and exteriors.
The stencilling department alone have clearly been kept busy for months, getting artfully distressed slogans down on every bar door and meeting-house interior. The movie is immaculately dressed, but there's a mannequin blandness lurking beneath: it's all logistics, no guts.
And The Non-Affleck Cast Is Solid
It boasts some thoughtful, detailed supporting performances from actors playing corruptible cops – Chris Cooper as the careworn Florida officer Figgis and Brendan Gleeson as Thomas Coughlin, the Boston police captain and Joe's sorrowing father.
At least the rest of the cast is spectacular, even if the center figure is a snooze. Gleeson and his Tampa counterpart, Chris Cooper's police chief Figgis, sniff around the edges of the film for chances for their stoic supporting men to dominate the screen. As Figgis's daughter, a failed actress turned addict turned pastor, Elle Fanning softens a role that should have claws… Live by Night loses energy whenever Sienna Miller's not around. She makes this world with its showdowns about machismo and machine guns seem fresh, instead of the same old antler clashes…. Best of all, there's Matthew Maher's Ku Klux Klan member, RD Pruitt
[MTV]
TL;DR
If you're looking for a period piece that looks the part and gangsters doing gangster things, Live By Night should do the trick. If you're looking for a well-told story, you might want to pass on this one.
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