Live by Night

Dir: Ben Affleck

2016

**

I was quite excited when I learned of the adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s novel Live by Night. While I was disappointed they didn’t decide to adapt ‘The Given Day’ first (the first of the Coughlin stories), I can understand why they would rather make the second story and ignore the other two, as Live By Night has far more meat on the bone as far as structure and content go, although given the right director and a film studio with vision, a trilogy could have worked. Warner Bros. is not that studio and I’m afraid Ben Affleck isn’t that director. Lehane’s novel is long, it’s focused equally on Coughlin’s life in Boston, Ybor City and in Cuba, but the film almost completely ignores the Boston part, particularly the time he spends in prison – which is one of the best parts of the novel, in my personal opinion. The look of the film had to be right, and it does look good, but unfortunately it’s all style over content. Ben Affleck’s direction is passionless, his performance even less so. The style is authentic but everything looks studio built, I was never convinced, I never once got lost in the story, I was always watching Ben Affleck pretending to be Joe Coughlin. I can’t help but think this should have been the new Once Upon a Time in New York. This felt like an am-dram version of every generic period gangster going, but without any of the excitement. I like Ben Affleck but he really should have given the lead role to someone else, maybe then the film would have been better and he could have focused on the direction, as it is his performance and direction seem half-hearted. Co-stars Sienna Miller and Chris Cooper both give brilliant performances but these are severely compromised by everyone else’s. Chris Messina was pretty likable in his role and neither Zoe Saldana nor Elle Fanning did anything wrong, they just weren’t given the proper opportunity to really tackle their roles head on. I felt that much of Cooper’s part was cut, quite possibly because of how good he was. Live by Night should have been a sprawling epic, it covers so much of old America’s rich and gritty history (including prohibition, the Klu Klux Klan, the rise of evangelicalism) it really could have been something special. It’s a smart watch that hasn’t been wound up, a kid’s toy with no battery, a music box without any music. It feels rushed and a little bit cheap if I’m being honest. It’s as if interest was lost halfway through and that the finished film was deemed simply ‘good enough’ for release. It does have some stunning visuals and all the right actors were cast but its heart just isn’t pumping. It has been said that Affleck was battling alcoholism while filming and that he was also on a tight schedule due to his Batman duties but either way, it is clear that the passion he once had for the film had clearly dampened by the time cameras started to roll. A real shame and a wasted opportunity, hopefully someone will come along one day and do the whole trilogy justice but not for another twenty years or so by which time this sorry film will have been long forgotten.