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Live By Night: The Affleck Attack Continues
By Sandra Olmsted
Hot on the heels of Casey Afflect’s award-winning role in Manchester by the Sea, Ben Affleck writes, produces, directs, and stars in Live by Night, a La La Land-style homage to Golden Age Hollywood’s film noirs.
Affleck doesn’t especially capture the dark, atmospheric films marked by a particularly gritty cinematography, menacing suspense, and pessimistic, fatalistic themes. He does, not surprisingly, create an actor’s film by focusing more on showcasing the work of the actors than the story.
Like his 2007 directorial debut, Gone Baby Gone, Affleck adapted Live by Night from a Dennis Lehane novel; however, Affleck does little to condense the novel into a film. The film, consequently, has too many plot and themes simmering on and under its surface.
The many plots do, however, give the film the feel that anything could happen, which is one of the film’s strengths. The others are the strong direction of the actors and the contemplative use of actors’ emotive talents to convey meaning.
Live by Night starts with a montage of battle scenes and narration describing how WWI turned Joe Coughlin (Ben Affleck) into an outlaw unwilling to take orders from any authority.
During prohibition, Joe robs banks and mobsters alike. He also loves Sienna Miller (Emma Gould), the girlfriend of Irish mob boss Albert White (Robert Glenister). Soon, Joe finds himself working for White’s rival, crime boss Maso Pescatore (Remo Girone), and running rum in Florida with the help of longtime cohort Dion Bartolo (Chris Messina).
Joe falls in love with Graciela (Zoe Saldana) and settles into a domestic bliss that defies film noir’s pessimism and fatalism.
Joe also finds that police chief Figgis (Chris Cooper) is friendlier than the Boston police are, especially Joe’s own father, Police Commissioner Thomas Coughlin (Brendan Gleeson).
When Chief Figgis’ beautiful but sullied daughter, Loretta (Elle Fanning), becomes an evangelist, she rallies the people against Joe’s illegal and popular operations just as Joe tries to go legit by building a casino.
Then, Maso sends his inept son Digger (Max Casella) to takeover Joe’s operation. Having fought the Irish mob and the KKK and united the Cuban, African-American, and Italian mobsters, Joe isn’t letting go of power without a fight.
Terrific action scenes punctuate the sprawling narrative, and numerous threats build to a first climax related to Maso and Boston’s Italian mob. A second climax follows regarding Loretta and Chief Figgis, making neither climax effective.
The stated theme of “this life is heaven” fits, yet is a heavy-handed, afterthought meant to tie up the incredibly huge package of this film with a neat little bow of esoteric, out-of-place sentiment. Regardless of these criticisms, Live by Night provides exceedingly watchable entertainment because of the acting, cinematography, costuming, and set design.
In theaters now, Live by Night, a Warner Bros. release, runs 128 minutes and is rated R for strong violence, language throughout, and some sexuality/nudity.
