Good Time

It's hard to judge when intense and brilliantly crafted stylization and unpredictable development clash with a weak script and overblown ambitions. I understand the randomness in the twists and turns as a reflection of the utter destruction of the social backdrop and future, but I don't really get why it's driven (however impressively) through an artificially over-designed cybernetic form and why I have to suggestively experience a plot full of nonsense and illogic. I really liked the attention to details, the opening part before the hospital escape, Pattinson's sweaty performance and the unpredictability that makes the film never boring and never letting you breathe. Unfortunately, however, I watched it with the same disinterest as the presidential election in Burkina Faso, which is a big and painful defeat. (12/29/2017)

A kinetic social thriller that feels burnt out from the first shot and isn’t helped much by the lobotomized twists, or even the likable but insensitively used 80s analogue hell soundtrack from Oneohtrix Point Never. Pattinson gives the best performance of his career - but let's face it, his character is so external that he doesn't have to do all that much work. (05/27/2017)

This is an interesting film that some will be excited about in how different it is, others will be rather disgusted, and then there will be those, like me, who don't know what to think, if it's really that good or if it's actually a misstep that masquerades as good. But it's definitely a film that deserves more than one viewing. (02/28/2018)

A raw and pretty original insight into the life of a cunning thief. Pattinson enjoys his role of perverse scab with strange moral boundaries. His attempts at getting his disabled brother out of prison/hospital and the winding road leading to this goal serves only as a way of investigating the logic both of the main protagonist and of the lower classes of dirty New York. Great music, unbelievable pace. (11/02/2021)

Good Time is a much grittier and sweatier bit of neo(n)-noir than Drive, in terms of both style and digressive narrative. Instead of a straightforward journey from point A to point B, it offers unnecessary detours and dead ends. Good Time comes close to being a pure genre movie only during the opening bank heist, after which everything goes downhill in a way that other heist movies don't prepare you for. Connie doesn’t have a plan. He improvises based on who/what gets in his way. One half-baked (and sometimes very funny due to its idiocy) decision is followed by another. The film also gives the impression that it was made “on the fly”, but it holds together thanks to good rhythmic structure (alternating between quiet scenes without music and dynamic passages) and recurring motifs (Connie is convinced that he was a dog in a previous life, which explains why he and a four-legged friend get along so well later). Furthermore, the protagonist’s efforts to save his brother from going to prison are used systematically to portray the life of the New York underclass, and this portrait of people with no money, no ambition and no hope for a better future, whose drinking and drug use are occasionally supplemented with police brutality, is thus as important as the melodramatic story of self-destructive brotherly love (which makes the film reminiscent of early-period Scorsese). Together with an edgy, highly visceral thriller (shot almost exclusively in close-ups without establishing shots), we get a social drama in neon colours and with electronic music (which, apart from arcade video games, reminded me of the first Terminator) in one surprisingly compact package. What is certain is that you will not experience a similarly unpredictable and comparably intense film in the cinema any time soon. 85% (07/17/2017)