Ils vivent la nuit

"Live By Night" sees star Ben Affleck back in the director's chair for the 4th time, his previous directorial offerings being "Gone Baby Gone", "The Town", and best picture winner "Argo", and sadly, it's easily his worst. "Live By Night" boasts a wonderful cast, stunning cinematography, and enthralling action set pieces but lacks any emotional weight or an interesting story, it's your usual by the numbers gangster flick about tough guys in over-sized suits blasting each other with Tommy guns and stabbing each other in the back. "Live By Night" is not a bad film by any means but is a forgettable entry in the gangster film genre and a disappointing directorial effort from Ben Affleck.

Ben Affleck's new movie could best be described as "sprawling". In both directing and writing the screenplay (based on a novel by Dennis Lehane), Affleck has aimed for a "Godfather" style gangster epic and missed: not missed by a country mile, but missed nonetheless.

Morally bankrupted by his experiences in the trenches, Joe Coughlin (Affleck) returns to Boston to pick and choose which social rules he wants to follow. Not sociopathic per se, as he has a strong personal code of conduct, but Coughlin turns to robbery walking a delicate path between the warring mob factions of the Irish community, led by Albert White (the excellent Robert Glenister from TV's "Hustle"), and the Italian community, led by Maso Pescatore (Remo Girone). Trying to keep him out of jail is his father ("Harry Potter"'s Brendan Gleeson) who – usefully – is the Deputy Police Chief. Life gets complicated when he falls in love with White's moll, Emma Gould (Sienna Miller). The scene is set for a drama stretching from Boston to the hot and steamy Everglades over a period of the next twenty years.

Although a watchable popcorn film, the choppy episodic nature of the movie is hugely frustrating, with no compelling story arc to glue all of the disparate parts together. The (often very violent) action scenes are very well done and exciting but as a viewer you don't feel invested in a 'journey' from the beginning of the film to the (unsatisfactory) ending. In my experience it's never a good sign when the writer considers it necessary to add a voice-over to the soundtrack, and here Affleck mutters truisms about his thoughts and motives that irritate more than illuminate.

The sheer volume of players in the piece (there are about three film's worth in here) and the resulting minimal screen time given to each allows no time for character development. Unfortunately the result is that you really care very little about whether people live or die and big plot developments land as rather an "oh" than an "OH!".

Affleck puts in a great turn as the autistic central character whose condition results in a cold, calculating demeanor and a complete lack of emotion reflecting on his face. Oh, hang on… no, wait a minute… sorry… I've got the wrong film…. I'm thinking about "The Accountant". I don't know whether he filmed these films in parallel. I generally enjoy Ben Affleck's work (he was excellent in "The Town") but for 95% of this film his part could have been completed by a burly extra with an Affleck mask on. In terms of acting range, his facial muscles barely get to a "2" on the scale. Given the double problem that he is barely credible as the "young man" returning mentally wounded from the trenches, then in my opinion he would have been better to have focused on the writing and directing and found a lead of the likes of an Andrew Garfield to fill Coughlin's shoes.

That's not to say there is not some good acting present in their all but brief supporting roles. Elle Fanning ("Trumbo", "Maleficent") in particular shines as the Southern belle Loretta Figgis: a religious zealot driving her police chief father (Chris Cooper, "The Bourne Identity") to distraction. Cooper also delivers a star turn as the moral but pragmatic law-man.

Sienna Miller ("Foxcatcher") delivers a passable Cork accent and does her best to develop some believable chemistry with the rock-like Affleck. Zoe Saldana ("Star Trek") is equally effective as a Cuban humanitarian.

In summary, it's sprawlingly watchable… but overall a disappointment, with Affleck over-reaching. One day we surely will get a gangster film the likes of another "Godfather", "Goodfellas" or "Untouchables". Although this has its moments, unfortunately it's more towards the "Public Enemies" end of the genre spectrum.

(For the graphical version of this review please visit bob-the-movie-man.com. Thanks.)

Producer, director, writer and lead actor: Ben Affleck.

Let's look at those contributions one by one.

Producer. The film looks good. There's an expert team on both sides of the camera. But there's a problem with length. Also, it feels as though the adaptation from Dennis Lehane's novel has not sufficiently transformed what was on the page into cinematic story-telling.

Director. There are excellent action sequences, such as an exciting car-chase and a final shoot-out. As a director of actors Mr Affleck is strong: he elicits particularly striking work from Chris Messina, Elle Fanning, Remo Girone and Sienna Miller. Within scenes there's a reassuring sense of control of pace. But overall, there is a sense of the director being in thrall to the screenplay.

Writer. This is the weakest link. It feels in awe of its source material. I read that an entire strand of the book was removed for the purposes of the film, but this was not enough. The producer and/or the director needed to tell the writer to put it through another draft. Or put it in its current form on Netflix as a two-part drama.

Lead actor. A matter of taste, I guess. Mr Affleck's persona is always of a handsome man who knows he's handsome, and who is very pleased with himself about it. I find this insufferable in large doses. And there is a very large dose of it here. Mr Affleck's performances lack depth -- compare and contrast those of this amazing brother Casey. As far as I'm concerned, Mr B. Affleck is more a male model than an actor: in James Bond terms, he's a George Lazenby rather than a Daniel Craig. His best film performance is his self-parodying turn in 'SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE'. In LIVE BY NIGHT he is serviceable, nothing more. His director clearly couldn't get anything else out of him.

It's instructive to compare Ben Affleck to Clint Eastwood, who also has a limited -- maybe even more limited -- range as an actor. But Eastwood the director usually casts Eastwood the actor brilliantly. DIRTY HARRY, UNFORGIVEN,GRAN TORINO etc: who could be better? By contrast, there are many young actors who could have played the lead in LIVE BY NIGHT, and many writers who could have delivered a better screenplay, especially when guided by a strong producer and director. Time will tell whether Ben Affleck is as good in those last two departments as ARGO suggested he might be. The promise he showed in those areas in that film is not in evidence here.

I went to the theater to watch a Gangster/Mafia movie, and I got one. Mafia movies are by far my favorite type of movie. Live by Night delivered that 1920's gangster look. Ben Affleck does an amazing Irish Mafia member persona. The story was very moving and the characters were likable. There was just enough action in the movie. The tommy gun fight scenes felt like a real 1920's gang shoot out. Live by Night shows a true gangster movie look. Most Mafia movies rely on the story to make their movie good. Live by Night uses action and an amazing story. I had a little trouble with keeping up with the names of the characters but later on I started memorizing their names. Defiantly go see this movie if your a gangster/mafia movie fan. Live by Night will not disappoint you.

"Maybe it's true. We all find ourselves in lives we didn't expect. But what I learned was powerful men don't have to be cruel."Joe Coughlin (Ben Affleck)

Yet in the best of gangster, powerful men like Michael Corleone and Henry Hill are cruel, no matter how gentle their exteriors. So it seems with Joe Coughlin, a prohibition "bandit," as he calls himself, who doesn't think of himself as a gangster ("I don't wanna be a gangster. Stopped kissing rings a long time ago."). Yet he kills or has others killed in the name of moving toward heaven.

Although beautifully appointed and set in Florida and Cuba, writer/director Affleck's crime story misses the weight of crime films, which casually juxtapose the serious with the not so. It lacks the sass of Pulp Fiction and the gravitas of The Godfather with not much of their verbal gymnastics or irony.

Joe wanting to be a saint while being a sinner requires an actor of considerable resources, which Affleck showed a modicum of recently in the Accountant because it required him to be affectless. He brings that same stolid mien to this film and endangers the edge necessary for the success of actors like Al Pacino. Like Affleck, the film is listless except when Tommy Guns take charge.

As Joe navigates from a low-rent lover, Emma (Sienna Miller), to a classy love, Graciella (Zoe Saldana), director Affleck spends too much time on their embraces and too little on what makes him love them so passionately. He does love his own image as his abundance of self close-ups testifies. Maybe there is no passion, just old affectless Affleck.

It's dumping time in Hollywood, and Live by the Night is a classic example of why smart studios dump dull movies in January. It's not all that bad the way Joe is not all that bad. However, it just doesn't have the firepower to go against the big guns in the Oscar race. Remember the wild surprises and rich characters of the long-form Sopranos?

Maybe that's why the film gangster genre feels troubled here: The arch enemy, TV!