Good Time

Robert Pattinson has steered very clear from his Twilight years to give us an impressive resumé of independent films that have scrubbed off his Cullen brand and moulded him into a compelling actor. The Safdie Brother's Good Time is but a testament to his ability, giving us what could be his best performance yet. Two brothers, Connie and Nick Nikas, attempt at a bank robbery but fail and Nick lands in jail. This sets Connie to embark on a desperate and dangerous journey to get his brother out. What seems like a simple premise, quickly descends into a twisted odyssey, offering more than just a casual heist-gone-wrong flick.

Pattinson stuns as Connie Nikas with an approach to the character that will make you ponder on his motivations and lead you to question what he will do next. This is far from anything he has done prior, Connie is unsympathetic, desperate and immoral as he evades the ludicrous situations he finds himself in with but a tinge of luck. The other characters, played splendidly by mostly newcomers, paint a picture of debauchery and excess for New York's underworld, forever maintaining a true level of authenticity that often feels part- 70s arthouse and part- contemporary anthemic.

A large fraction of the success of Good Time is thanks to masterful direction by Benny Safdie and Josh Safdie and a consistently stellar performance from Robert Pattinson. A sleeper hit for 2017, all the more reason to watch it.

Connie (Robert Pattinson) and Nick (Benny Safdie) are low-life brothers in NYC who attempt to rob a bank so that they can buy a farm in Virginia. Things don't go well, and Nick, who is mentally handicapped, gets arrested. Connie then begins a night-long odyssey to try and get his brother free while avoiding the cops himself, running into an assortment of fringe characters along the way. Also featuring Buddy Duress, Taliah Webster, Barkhad Abdi, Peter Verby, Robert Clohessy, and Jennifer Jason Leigh.

Filmed in a gritty manner with over-saturated colors and a relentless electronic score, once this movie gets started it becomes an adrenaline-fueled marathon of tense situations, with Pattinson's character consistently asked to make split-second decisions that go wrong as often as right. I consider Robert Pattinson one of the least impressive movie stars to have sprung up in the last decade, but he acquits himself well here, grungy, desperate and vulpine. All of the supporting characters are believable, although largely unsavory. I wasn't quite as impressed with the end result as some critics, as I felt that the story stumbled to an unsatisfying conclusion, and nothing really added up to much, with events virtually ending where they began. That may have been the filmmakers point, but the majority of the film is a tense journey that crime film fans should enjoy.

"I think something very important is happening and it's deeply connected to my purpose." Connie (Robert Pattinson)

The depth in the heist-gone-wrong Good Time is the way the director brothers Safdie take us through the seedy side of NYC and the fraught love between Connie and his mentally disabled brother, Nick (Benny Safdie). These two are not bright enough to carry off a heist, proved by Connie's clumsily eluding NYPD and continuing to search for a pot of gold that will give him and his brother the peaceful life they are not meant for.

Here is a heist movie with a heart and enough cinematic savvy to make it an instant classic.

Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men lingers behind the devoted brothers, and Martin Scorses's Mean Streets and Sidney Lumet's Dog Day Afternoon provide the paradigm for clueless hoods confronting the underlife in their daily lives. In fact, interesting characters like mothers and minorities dance out of scenes almost as fast as they enter. Yet naturalism pervades the proceedings as different lowlifes and poor minorities come and go the way they would in NYC at night in the world of thieves and good but poor people.

Corey Ellman (Jennifer Jason-Leigh) is Connie's sometime girlfriend, who supplies money and hope for a vacation to Puerto Vallarta, neither of which is destined to happen. The actress is so fine, as she always is in indies, that her vanishing seems normal under the circumstances and lamentable for the audience.

Sequences such as the mayhem in an amusement park and a hospital teeter on the surreal while the frenetic action continues apace. The directors are geniuses with the close-ups, perhaps the dominant proxemic of the film. Much credit must go to Sean Price Williams' cinematography, which could have been the standard jittery hand held if it weren't so elegantly moving the characters through the night with frenetic abandon and inevitable doom.

Rob Pattinson has come a long way from the Twilight series, being the actor I am sure he wanted to be beyond his somber character in the famous series. Pattinson is the center of the action, withstanding the tyranny of the close up and a character so crazy with love for his brother that we root for Connie although he's a small-time hood without a real plan.

Good Time is a small movie about small people doing small things. But never let it be said that it's dreary or dull. This movie somehow took the edgy anxiety of a waking nightmare, bottled it up, and put it on the screen so you'd leave the theater in a cold sweat. If the DVD/Blu-ray release of Good Time doesn't have a critic blurb saying "this movie gave me indigestion," I'll be sorely disappointed.

The setup is simple: a wanted man (Pattinson) tries to raise the money for bail to get his mentally handicapped brother (Safdie) out of prison. The two had held up a bank earlier that day and throughout the night, Connie resorts to dubious and dangerous lengths to avoid punishment and consequence.

In an interview with NPR co-director and co-star Benny Safdie said "We wanted to deliver a piece of pulp that actually felt dangerous." With that in mind cinematographer Sean Price Williams shot on 35mm and much of the movie is loaded with claustrophobic close-ups and delirious hand-held sweeps. The 35mm film bleeds into the New York nocturne. The punishing fluorescents and neon glints that makeup the movie's milieu taunts our protagonist as he spins his wheels round and round. It's a movie that recaptures the intimacy and intensity of a 4am sneak-about.

Even in calmer moments, the film pulses in its nervy desperation. The various innocents the come across Connie's path are more-or-less looking for the same thing, a way out of the mess. They approach their situations with variant levels of legality but never with Pattinson's level of sleaze or sense of entitlement. Despite this, Connie proves remarkably resourceful; one minute his back is up against a corner, the next he's clawed his way out and slumping towards the next hurdle of his odyssey. One can't help but think that if Connie put his mind towards anything other than crime, he'd be on the cover of a business magazine.

Instead he's in an unending fever dream whereby the urban sprawl is the water to his drowning rat. At its height, Good Time has the sparseness and clarity of a John Steinbeck novel and at its most pedestrian it still has the chaotic energy of The 25th Hour (2002).

Good Time is essentially a cinematic render, of someone's worst day. It shares the narrative of Connie & Nick Nikas, small-time criminals that find themselves confronted by the consequences of a botched bank heist. Its storyline then comprises of a myriad of unfortunate events, short episodes that draws optimism, and more doses of unfortunate events that compounds & compounds on its characters. While these concepts aren't exactly groundbreaking, the direction of Josh & Benny Safdie, plus the performances of Roberto Pattinson & Benny Safdie, are transcendent.

Good time deserves notice, from its technical wonders alone. The Safdie brothers & Sean Prince Williams' knack for showcasing the city-night grime through superb cinematography & widescreen death stares on its characters, heightens the external & personal crises of its personas. From here, the adrenalince-inducing score, that sees a deeply entertaining infusion of EDM, absolutely intensify its impassioned & stoic moments. As for Good Time's performances, Pattinson was a revelation, shedding his typecast with a committed portrayal. He conveys emphatically the scum of Connie, yet projects unrelenting devotion for Nick as his redeeming quirk, drawing audiences to his plight. Benny Safdie was just as superb, donning the impaired Nick brilliantly, accounting for Good Time's emotional-center.

Overall, Good Time was a pleasant surprise despite the simplicity of its feebly-paced narrative. It comprises of genre-defining tenets, such as audacious screenplay that spotlights convincing immoralities under duress, plus rousing filmmaking techniques. It is remarkably acted, featuring a breakthrough performance from Pattinson, showcasing his eye-opening, artistic mettle. There is then genuine excitement, for the Safdie brother's future offerings!