Review: Live By Night

If Live By Night, Ben Affleck's fourth directorial effort and second film adaptation of a Dennis Lehane novel, were judged by looks alone, it would seem a success. His production team have done well by its Prohibition-era setting, its performers are beautifully costumed and lovingly lensed, and Affleck's own affinity for old Hollywood's gangster genre is palpable. Yet Live By Night is a decidedly hollow affair, enervating from its opening moments and failing to sustain any momentum or interest in its overstuffed narrative.

"I left a soldier, I came home an outlaw," says Joe Coughlin (Affleck), explaining how his experiences during World War I altered him from a presumably ethically sound man into a criminal ripping off banks and card games. He is hopelessly entangled in a passionate affair with Emma Gould (Sienna Miller), the mistress of deadly Irish mob boss Albert White (Robert Glenister, despite the disapproval of his police chief father (Brendan Gleeson), but there are some lines he won't cross. When White's rival and Italian mafia head Maso Pescatore (Remo Girone) tries to leverage Joe's affair with Emma to convince him to kill White, Joe refuses to be drawn into the war between the two gangs: "I ain't a gangster, I stopped kissing rings a long time ago."

Nevertheless, Joe does get pulled into the life after Emma betrays him, White's gang beats him to within an inch of his life, and he's thrown into jail for murdering three cops during a bank heist gone awry (though his dad convinces the district attorney to charge Joe with a more minor charge than murder). Upon his release, he vows revenge on White and goes to work for Pescatore, who sends him to Tampa to run his lucrative bootlegging operation. Joe settles into the next chapter of his life of crime, muscling out the local competition and anyone who would dare go against Pescatore, cozying up to local sheriff Irving Figgis (Chris Cooper), romancing Cuban immigrant Graciela Suarez (Zoe Saldana), and working on his dream to building a casino as another means of profit when Prohibition comes to an end. Naturally, it isn't too long before everything goes pear-shaped when Irving's brother-in-law, who happens to be a member of the local Ku Klux Klan, starts blowing up Joe's club and killing his men.

Live By Night, whose very title recalls noir classics They Drive By Night and They Live By Night, has all the genre requirements but it's sorely lacking in soul. Affleck would have been wise to streamline the story as there are far too many characters and plot strands for a film that runs just a little over two hours. The result is a revolving door of talented actors making little to no impression and interpersonal dynamics gaining hardly any traction. Miller and Zaldana are fetchingly brassy and sensual, respectively, but they share zero chemistry with Affleck despite his including numerous love scenes with both actresses. The lack of connection especially affects the Joe and Emma relationship as it lessens the impact of her betrayal.

Affleck himself contributes to the film's issues with his borderline wooden performance adding to Live By Night's overall listlessness. The only time he and the film are shaken out of their stupour are when Elle Fanning appears on the scene as Loretta Figgis, Irving's daughter who goes from aspiring starlet to heroin-addicted prostitute to born-again preacher. Affleck's screenplay barely sketches her trajectory, but the young actress builds those bridges. Live By Night could have easily jettisoned all of its first half and made Joe's dealings with Loretta (whose character was inspired by Aimee McPherson, the era's celebrity evangelist) as the bedrock of the film. Their exchanges have more than a hint of the dark complexity that pulsed through Lehane's novel. Unfortunately, Affleck never goes into too dark a corner with either his acting, writing or directing and Live By Night suffers from being too safe and sanitised.

Live By Night

Directed by: Ben Affleck

Written by: Ben Affleck; adapted from the novel by Dennis Lehane

Starring: Ben Affleck, Elle Fanning, Brendan Gleeson, Chris Messina, Sienna Miller, Zoe Saldana, Chris Cooper, Robert Glenister, Scott Eastwood, Titus Welliver, Anthony Michael Hall, Chris Sullivan, Max Casella, Remo Girone