Review of Live by Night (2016) by Mike S — 29 Jan 2017

The problem when you direct three great films such as Gone Baby Gone, The Town and my favourite, Argo, is that it sets a standard that is very high and hard to keep hitting.

Live By Night is not a bad film, but it is a bad box office film, which is different. The biggest problem is that it feels in some ways like a Quentin Tarantino film, where there are many scenes with lots of lots of character dialogue and interactions that linger and don't contain a lot of action. Mixed into that are some great liens of dialogue that would fit well into a Bogart or Cagney film from the 30s. But the film doesn't have the 'cool' elements that make Tarantino's work appeal to mass audiences and allow the generations with short attention spans to sit through a 180 minute movie without getting bored. The film just doesn't sit in a market that will appeal to many.

Other issues with the film are that at it's heart, it's a simple gangster story, but it's dressed up with lots of extra subplots, such as involving the KKK and the morality police.

But whilst the film has several problems to deal with, it constantly saves itself with a great scene here and there, as well as having great actors, not least of all, the director himself, who plays the role with great confidence and subtlety. The film is also beautifully shot (you can see where the $60mi was spent).

If the dialogue was maybe cut down by 20% and the action scenes, especially towards the end, beefed up a bit, the film could have been quite a cracking gangster film that might have performed a little better. But this film only exists because Affleck wanted it too, and Warner Bros was keen after Argo to keep Affleck happy, as well as keep him in the business of making films as his next project is the much talked about "The Batman".

The film is worthy of a watch, if for nothing else, that it's not a CGI fest in the style of XXX or Resident Evil. Good actors, delivering good dialogue, with a plot that requires a bit of attention from the audience. It won't go down in Affleck's career as one of his best films, but it's by no means a poor film.