Ben Affleck has had a roller-coaster career. When he is good, he directs, writes, or performs so viscerally and amazingly; whether that be his penmanship in Good Will Hunting, Academy Award winning Argo, or his role in Gone Girl, Affleck has proven repeatedly that he can be talented and iconic. When he is bad, it all twists into either ridiculous outings such a Gigli and The Accountant or produces some rather lacklustre content. It’s the biggest shame because you know Affleck can hit it out of the park and he has proven that repeatedly, and then when he is on a golden streak it quickly becomes soiled. Even when he is playing Batman.
Which is why, following on from the disaster that was The Accountant, Live by Night had to excel. It had to power forward away from Affleck’s failure. Sadly, however, it fails to shoot above an average status, becoming a somewhat overlong gangster garb.
Starring and directed by Affleck, Live by Night. The film revolves around the roaring twenties and an underground network of gangster-run speakeasies. Enjoying the spoils of this criminal underbelly, Joe Coughlin has turned his back on his strict upbringing. However, when he crosses the paths of a dangerous opponent, his world is turned upside down.
The premise to this film would make a perfect hour and a half action romp, right? Man crosses a villainous gang leader and has to get vengeance or fight for his honour. That shit is thriller movie gold, with a 1920s’ style, and those round circular guns that I’m trying so hard not to call Bugsy Malone weapons because these don’t shoot sludge. Concisely put together, Live by Night could have been so much more. But based on a book by Dennis Lehane, it’s hard not to want to transfer a lot of the material onto the big screen. The biggest problem, then, is making that an amenable transition but somewhere in the translation, the excitement of the novel was lost.
It’s not for a lack of Affleck trying his hardest. True to form, Live by Night is an aesthetically pleasing and the acting from a cast consisting of Brendan Gleeson, Zoe Saldana, Chris Cooper, and Sienna Miller is pretty good. However, the story on screen never amounts to anything fresh that we haven’t seen before. It’s speakeasy gangsters, for god’s sake! That means fedoras, furs, jazz, and shoot-em up scenes. Live by Night jumps and leaps through time, losing characters in the dialogue as it goes (several people close to Joe die and all they are given is a throwaway line,) and you have no emotional investment in the characters. That’s the biggest sin of the movie: There is nothing here to make you care about Joe and, therefore, it is stripped from tension or entertainment.
(Also, for a film called Live by Night, they do an awful lot of deals and crimes during the day. That’s neither here nor there but an observation that crossed my mind.)
For a lazy Sunday evening where you don’t have to work too hard for your cinematic meal, Live by Night is a pleasant and average film. But with a talent like Affleck leading the way here, Live by Night is a diluted action film that never is as fulling as you’d hope.
Live by Night is out on DVD & Blu-Ray now!
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