Review of Live by Night (2016) by Tkc88 — 27 Apr 2017

This had all the ingredients to be a great film: good source material (Dennis Lehane's book forms the 2nd chapter in a trilogy about the Coughlan family); a smart and stylish director (Ben Affleck) coming off an Academy Award; a beautifully interchangeable list of set pieces and wardrobe; and a genre that will never stop being entertaining.

However, the end result was a bloated and directionless mess. What should have been a crime film "epic" came across as a series of short scenes thrown together without any real flow. The choice to cast himself in the lead role has hurt Affleck's film here, and it appears that while he knows how to direct a suspenseful film, he is best served having somebody else write the screenplay (this is the first of Affleck's four films that he has written).

This film was a hugely missed opportunity.