Live by Night

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)

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)

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%]. (01/12/2017)

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)

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)