Directed by:
Ben AffleckScreenplay:
Ben AffleckCinematography:
Robert RichardsonComposer:
Harry Gregson-WilliamsCast:
Ben Affleck, Remo Girone, Elle Fanning, Zoe Saldana, Sienna Miller, Chris Messina, Anthony Michael Hall, Brendan Gleeson, Chris Cooper, Titus Welliver (more)VOD (2)
Plots(1)
A story set in the Prohibition Era and centered around a group of individuals and their dealings in the world of organized crime. (Warner Bros. US)
Videos (9)
Reviews (8)
Ben Affleck's ambitious attempt at a stylish gangster flick falls flat due to the fragmentation of the plot and the uncertain, conflicted script. Is it a Prohibition-era mafia tale or romantic multicultural cotton candy propping up a gangster storyline? Fortunately, this distracting element is partly saved by the great 1920s atmosphere and aesthetically extremely pleasing direction (the walk on the pier, the setting sun, etc.). I certainly wasn't bored, but I expected a bit more from Affleck. Maybe he’ll do better next time if he just concentrates on directing and casts someone with more charisma in the lead role instead of himself. As it is, it's just an average spectacle overall, even a bit below average in Affleck's directorial filmography.
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Everything I feared became a reality. You want a gritty gangster revenge flick, but instead you wait with fear in your eyes for a dressed-up Gatsby to pop around the corner in some lavish camera swoop. That's how "beautiful" Live By Night is, unfortunately, in this case. It does have a flair for pictorial composition, it’s well-acted with few exceptions, with some great roles given damn little space (Gleeson, Cooper). Unfortunately, thematically, it's a film that's not supposed to be so fancy, especially when right at the beginning you get a lively action set-piece like in Public Enemies. It is, after all, a gritty story from a harsh and unforgiving time, and not a poster-boy reminiscence of the golden 1930s. And that's exactly the point where Affleck screwed up, hand in hand with the script. He shows the twenties with poetics, in a haze of nostalgia that doesn’t fit. It called for shady businesses, down-to-earth characters, period hits and dirty streets, exactly how we like it in other films. Still, Affleck has a talent for directing and he can act, but hopefully, he will no longer write scripts.
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It was supposed to be a five-part miniseries or a three-hour film; then, it would benefit from the huge number of themes and great supporting characters. At the same time, the transformation of Affleck from a straight Boston scrounger to a mafia hood might not sound so unconvincing (at one point he assures us that he does not want to have anything to do with the world of organized crime; but after a moment he suddenly jumps into the position of a menacing boss). But when I think about the overload of storytelling, Live by Night is a fun, stimulating and time-relevant capture of a fragment from the history of the American South, which reflects a number of essential motifs. Solid work with period scenery, a good atmosphere, brisk action and a very fun side storyline and character - the main storyline needs more care and detail, but even so, I went along with the protagonist the entire time without any problems. The scene with KKK in a cigar factory is very, very relieving [75%].
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I'm not too happy. I admire Ben Affleck for being able to direct, write the script and play the lead role, not many people can do that, but the film itself is rather bland. Of the modern gangster flicks I like Gangster Squad the best because of the fast-paced and gritty action. Live by Night features only two action scenes really, and that's at the beginning and at the end, which were very good, the intense car chase and the final shootout had some oomph. I enjoyed the few brisk deaths, but I found the flow of the film itself very uninteresting and tedious, if it was 30 minutes longer I probably couldn't handle it. 60%
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If I was surrounded by Sienna Miller, Zoe Saldana and Elle Fanning, I would also feel like this is heaven, right here, we’re in it now. Ben Affleck as a director seems more interested in the charms of beautiful women than in the characters of the gangsters themselves. The female characters are portrayed in such a gentlemanly manner that you’ll forgive him all the rest. By which I mean the attempt to create an ambitious retro drama that bit off more than it could chew in terms of storytelling. Less would have been more, as evidenced by, for example, Sam Mendes’s Road to Perdition, which had fewer characters but a clear goal, which it pursued with precision and self-assurance. In Live by Night, Affleck seems to lose both of those attributes on occasions and the resulting movie is fun and pleasant to watch, but in comparison with the director’s perfect Argo, it seems more like a failure.
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