Live by Night ** (2016, Ben Affleck, Chris Messina, Elle Fanning, Brendan Gleeson) – Movie Review

Ben Affleck and Chris Messina star as Joe Coughlin and Dion Bartolo, a couple of Boston gangsters who, to get themselves out of trouble, do a deal with Italian mobster Maso Pescatore (Remo Girone) and set up shop in balmy Florida during the Prohibition era.

There it’s out of the frying pan and into the fire as they tangle with the police chief (Chris Cooper), and battle the mob competition, led by Albert White (Robert Glenister) and R D Pruitt (Matthew Maher) with connections to the Klu Klux Klan.

It is a complex, potentially involving, well set-up plot, taken from the novel by Dennis Lehane, known for Mystic River (2003), Gone Baby Gone (2007) Shutter Island (2010) and The Drop (2014).

But things have gone wrong on the way to the movies, and something is lost. Star Affleck writes the screenplay and directs, but there are pace problems and tone problems, as well as casting and acting problems.

Affleck, replacing Leonardo DiCaprio who just produces, is grim on one single note throughout the movie. Well, it’s a grim film and a grim role, but that makes for grim viewing. Affleck is often quite boring here and so is his film. Both need desperately to spark up. To be fair, Affleck seems powerful, intimidating and a bit scary, as befits his character. He acts the violent part convincingly.

The film commendably goes for quality, but never achieves status. Some of the would-be posh dialogue is just tedious flab on the film, spoken in a quiet mutter by most of the cast so you can barely hear it. Certainly you have to strain to hear the lines about the cinema’s heating system. That’s not good.

Casting? Well I didn’t really buy Affleck as an Irish mobster with a heart of gold, sorry. I certainly didn’t buy him as the son of Brendan Gleeson, the local police chief, though Gleeson is good as usual. I didn’t much like Glenister or Maher, and Messina is dull, but Girone scored well and Cooper delivers the film’s best performance as the troubled copper with a problem daughter (Elle Fanning) who eventually takes to religion in a big way that drives the plot along.

Fanning is uncannily adult and confident, though Sienna Miller and Zoe Saldana are a bit weak and lost as the women in Joe Coughlin’s life, but then they don’t have much to go on in a script that isn’t about the women. Miller plays the evil White’s duplicitous moll and Joe’s illicit lover. Saldana plays his new lover (and wife) down Florida way.

The Klu Klux Klan stuff is very interesting. Maybe the film should have just been about that, as it seems like the one fresh element of a hand-me-down gangster plot. The expensive looking production is impeccable, with great vintage cars and period sets, giving exactly the right mood and atmosphere. As director, Affleck tries a few tricks and flourishes, but it would be better not to notice them, and for Affleck to be getting us more involved in the story and characters.

Maybe, just maybe, there is a great gangster movie in here somewhere, but unfortunately Affleck hasn’t got in touch with it. There are one or two set pieces of car chases and shootouts that raise the heat and rivet the attention. But the ambitious film is never really in top gear and soon falls back into neutral mode after a quick push on the accelerator.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Movie Review

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