Live by Night

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. (11/15/2018)

We’ve already seen Affleck direct a film based on a Dennis Lehane story once before, and it’s worth noting that back then it was a great film (Gone Baby Gone). However, Live by Night got such a blow from critics that if I were in Affleck’s shoes, I probably wouldn’t recover and might prefer to leave the director's chair to some other industry buddies. But I’m strongly against that because I simply liked this latest effort from this well-known actor. I had been waiting for a solid gangster ride set in the era of American Prohibition for a long time, and Affleck served it to me on a golden platter. I’m not sure what to tell you about the film. A beautifully shot car chase with period cars like this hasn’t been seen before, the romantic subplot was bearable, and most of all, I enjoyed the witty wisdom the film spat out minute after minute. The final shootout was also a brilliant conclusion. It’s not a film with that many action scenes, but it relies mainly on the story and perfectly polished dialogues. Maybe Affleck should work on his facial expressions because it seemed like he only had one stony expression for everything (though that actually fit the role, so I probably shouldn’t hold it against him here). A solid gangster film of this caliber hasn’t been seen in quite some time. I give it 89%. (07/09/2017)

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. (01/16/2017)

Somewhere in there is a good film. Somewhere in the background, somewhere in the editing room. It's an hour longer, looks just as good and beautiful as what we got in the cinema, but besides those nice visuals, there are also functioning relationships between the characters and it has a story that doesn't rush anywhere and you can enjoy and have fun with it. Unfortunately, we got in the cinema evidently suffers from being brutally cut. Live by Night senselessly rushes forward, and instead of a modern gangster saga, we have twenty-minute episodes about dealing with mafia competition in Florida, then with the Ku Klux Klan, then with religious fanatics, and then it all ends. I felt like someone had played me a six-hour miniseries cut down to feature length, and I wasn't thrilled about it. (05/15/2017)

I must say, Ben Affleck disappointed me in this film. Besides showing off his acting chops, which I don't enjoy much, he's just too macho here, and you don't really believe his emotions, so story-wise, it's quite boring, and also predictable. It jumps from topic to topic, from scene to scene, to keep from being boring. And yet it's boring. (04/07/2017)