Live by Night: A Surprisingly Layered Plot
The Affleck brothers are continually becoming the most talented siblings in cinema history. With “Manchester by the Sea” blowing up for Casey, his brother Ben has always been influential to the art of filmmaking. For Ben, his next film “Live by Night” was directed by himself, and he stars in it. Although he is an Oscar winning director, I was surprised to see how layered the plot was for this movie.
“Live by Night” follows the roaring twenties where alcohol was still being circulated through speakeasies illegally. Affleck’s character, Joe Coughlin, sees the opportunity to make money as an outlaw. Unfortunately, he gets caught up with mobster activity that puts him in danger. Coughlin starts to realize that being a criminal has its troubles.
From the start, I felt a “Boardwalk Empire” vibe from this movie. The portrayal of the 1920s and the brutality of mobsters definitely brought that similar feel. The way Affleck directed this film was with plenty of detail and style. Some of the shots of the beach and landscape were quite beautiful for a crime/gangster movie. I have to admit, I’ve never seen a film that Ben has directed so this was a nice surprise.
One thing that I really enjoyed about this experience was, the fact that it had so many layers. Typically, because this genre has been done to a tee, it’s hard to find anything that original. We usually never have a main character who the fans can care about because there really is no character development. The rest of the film really has no development either. In “Live by Night” however, we see a little more of an interesting plot.
To start, Affleck’s character is technically not a gangster. He is just in love with a girl who is married to a mobster. I won’t spoil it, but they use this as a reason for revenge for Affleck’s character. I would have been a little disappointed if they decided to stop at this for a conflict. It would have felt formulaic if they did. Instead, Affleck and company continued to add different types of layers to keep the audience guessing throughout.
At points, the different twists and turns felt a little too much to handle, however, the entertainment valued stayed. I think that the movie also had a valid excuse for the many plot points. Due to the fact that the film was based off of a book, I feel that he wanted to keep it as accurate as possible. Although the movie contained various ideas, they all connected to the same main story.
The cast was filled with great performances. Elle Fanning, Zoe Saldana, and Chris Cooper all had realistic problems that people can relate to. Not only that, but I enjoyed how the story never stayed in just the Boston area. The film actually spent most of its running time in Miami. This was another aspect of shying away from generalizations.
The problems I had with this film were, the relationships that Affleck has with girls throughout the entire movie, and the ending. The relationships just felt dis-ingenuine and under developed. The film also took too long to wrap up. There were many points in the last twenty minutes where I felt like they should have ended in a different way.
All in all however, this was another surpriser for January. Ben Affleck does his job both as a director and a movie star. The things that should have been problems with the film weren’t, because Affleck twisted it in his own way based off of the book. Overall, this was another satisfying experience.
