Review #1,174: 'Live by Night' (2016)

I highly doubt that many people believed that Ben Affleck would ever recover from the plethora of awful decisions he made between 2000 and 2004, when he starred in such duds as Bounce, Pearl Harbor, Daredevil and, of course, Gigli. But recover he did, and he did so from behind the camera, delivering a stream of solid thrillers such as Gone Baby Gone, The Town, and the Best Picture winner of 2012, Argo (the first film to win the prize without the director receiving a nomination). For a star on a roll, 2016 wasn't particularly pleasant for Affleck, with his superhero movies Batman v Superman and Suicide Squad, along with his action movie The Accountant, all receiving a critical hammering (although I rather enjoyed the latter). His awaited return to directorial duties is also a bust; an underwhelming, cliched gangster picture with a half-arsed performance by its lead, pulling in only $21 million from a $65 million budget.

Joe Coughlin (Affleck) returns from fighting in World War I vowing never to kill another man. A petty bank robber and the son of an Irish police chief (Brendan Gleeson), Joe finds himself pulled into the gangster lifestyle when he falls in love with Emma Gould (Sienna Miller), the girlfriend of Irish mob boss Albert White (Robert Glenister). When their affair is uncovered, she wounds up dead and Joe is thrown into prison, serving only a few years thanks to the influence of his father. He comes out a changed man; one that is eager to take revenge and ready to embrace the lifestyle he always shunned in order to get it. Joe persuades White's rival, Italian boss Maso Pescatore (Remo Girone), to let him take over business in Tampa, where the rum business is booming thanks to Prohibition, and where White is trying to carve out a piece of the action for himself.

Live by Night basically follows Joe throughout his criminal career, as he partners up with his comedy relief best friend Dion Bartolo (Chris Messina) and sets about putting his rivals out of business. Yet the biggest challenge to his reign is not the White gang, but the Ku Klux Klan, who disapprove of his doing business with black folks, and dating Cuban beauty Graciela (Zoe Saldana). The most engaging sub-plot involves Joe's relationship with the local police Chief Figgis (Chris Cooper), a man who claims to be un-corruptible, yet turns a blind eye to Joe's dirty dealings. His beautiful daughter Loretta (Elle Fanning) goes off to Hollywood to become a star, only to come back a broken woman with a heroin addiction. She finds God, and draws a huge crowd as she preaches against the sin engulfing their city, placing Joe's grand casino development under threat in the process.

Whenever Cooper and Fanning are on screen, the movie hints at the far more interesting experience it could have been. The rest is a by-the-numbers gangster flick with the familiar good man corrupted by a thirst for success and power at its centre. There is some sumptuous cinematography and some colourful costume design to distract from the mediocrity of the story and performances, and an exciting shoot-out finale, but this is nowhere near enough to make up for how utterly bland Affleck's picture is. The talents of Gleeson and Saldana are wasted in underdeveloped roles, with only Messina's affable sidekick Bartolo identifiable as a fully realised character. Affleck plays the lead as stoic and damaged, but he fails to convince of the emotional turmoil bubbling beneath the surface. While it's hardly as outright embarrassing as Warner Bros.' other crime saga flop Gangster Squad (2013), the studio obviously knew they had a stinker when Live by Night was rushed onto Blu Ray a measly two months after hitting theatres.


Directed by: Ben Affleck
Starring: Ben Affleck, Chris Messina, Zoe Saldana, Chris Cooper, Elle Fanning, Sienna Miller, Brendan Gleeson
Country: USA

Rating: **

Tom Gillespie