Director Affleck should never have cut away from the chase.
AFFLECK-DRIVEN DRAMA LACKS COHESION
Producer Hal Roach is thought to have coined the phrase “cut to the chase” in the silent era, when movies would routinely end with one horseless carriage in frantic pursuit of another, and audiences couldn’t wait to see it.
It’s a lesson lost on Ben Affleck, who stages a rip- roarin’, gunsblazin’, multi- vehicle brawl in the early minutes of Live By Night, then cuts away from it and never cuts back.
There’s a lot to recommend Affleck’s fourth outing as a director, including sumptuous production design of Prohibition-era Florida; costumes and cinematography to match; and a restrained score from Harry Gregson- Williams ( The Martian).
What’s missing is a coherent throughline in this story of a gangster trying to make a name for himself by selling “the demon rum” as he calls it, and also working to set up a casino in the Sunshine State.
Characters pop up like targets at a shooting gallery — sometimes literally, given the amount of gunplay in the film — and melt away just as quickly. Sometimes even the ones presumed dead come back; others say their piece and are never heard from again. I haven’t read the 2012 source novel by Dennis Lehane, but the screenplay is as messy as it is busy.
Affleck also stars as Joe Coughlin, a disillusioned First World War veteran who decides to live as an outlaw; this in spite of the fact that his own father (Brendan Gleeson) is a straight-arrow Boston cop. But after getting on the wrong side of Irish mob boss Albert White (Robert Glenister) and learning that his girlfriend (Sienna Miller) has been killed, Joe approaches Italian mafia head Maso Pescatore (Remo Girone), who sends him to Florida to run their operations there.
Arriving in the bustling, immigrant- run Ybor City, Joe and his right- hand man ( Chris Messina) variously tolerate, kill, harass and fall in love with some of the Tampa suburb’s colourful characters. They include Chris Cooper as the local police chief, Elle Fanning as his religious daughter, Matthew Maher as an unhinged Ku Klux Klan leader (and the chief ’s brother-in-law), Zoe Saldana as a rum importer and Joe’s new love interest, et cetera.
All those et ceteras ultimately weigh down the picture. And things get even more complicated when Prohibition ends and Joe’s dreams of making gambling legal in Florida — he’s already got the casino half-built — are threatened by Fanning’s crusade against vice in all its forms. But neither she nor Saldana has enough screen time to register as real people.
Affleck’s understated acting style has often served him well ( think Gone Girl, Batman v. Superman, The Accountant), but in this case it leaves his gangster looking a little bloodless, even as more blood is spilled. Is he a heartless killer? A secret softie? He seems to be going for conflicted, but winds up with merely confusing. ( Speaking of which, am I the only one who keeps mispronouncing the title? I keeping saying “Live” as in “Live from New York” when it should be “Live” as in “Live long and prosper.”)
Affleck as a director has had an unblemished record since his feature debut, 2007’s Gone Baby Gone. The Town was a superlative cops-and-robbers flick; Argo a perfect caper; and there’s no reason not to expect great things of The Batman and his upcoming remake of Witness for the Prosecution.
As for this one, I leave you with a quote from Joe himself, delivered in one of his many voiceovers: “I realize it’s not enough to break the rules. You have to be strong enough to make your own.” It’s advice the director should have taken to heart. ∂∂