Live by Night

There’s a whole lot going on throughout Live by Night. Somewhere in there is a crime film worthy of its intention.

3021d ago

Ben Affleck's 'Live by Night' struggles with crime clichés.

3021d ago

In Ben Affleck’s new crime drama, he plays a 1920s mobster with a fatal flaw: He’s a softie. Affleck himself has an equally tragic one: He views himself as his best possible leading man, which he isn’t. At least, not in this film.

3021d ago

Ben Affleck wrote, directed and stars in this retelling of Dennis Lehane's 1920s-set novel about the son of an honest Boston-Irish cop who works his way up in organized crime.

3021d ago

Ben Affleck's fourth film as a director has many of the virtues of his others, yet this Prohibition crime saga doesn't zing. Maybe because Affleck plays a ruthless gangster who is also a good guy.

3021d ago

Labelling “Live By Night” a disaster is a little uncharitable; the baggy drama is perhaps more painfully mediocre than full-blown folly, but it’s close.

3021d ago

Something is missing from Ben Affleck’s prohibition-era gangster film, but it isn’t technical proficiency.

3021d ago

The visual and performative elements are polished enough in “Live by Night,” but it lacks any sense of urgency.

3021d ago

Affleck sports plenty of snappy ’20s fashions, tailored double-breasted suits, often cream-colored, and elegant Borsalino-style fedoras. He’s dressed to kill for sure. Too bad his movie is so deadly dull.

3021d ago

Somewhere inside the 128-minute Live by Night is a reasonably solid 168-minute movie struggling to get out. No, that’s not a typo: You can sense the contours of an absorbing story as writer/director/star Ben Affleck’s slapdash and fragmented assemblage limps along. Most of the pieces are there, but they remain pieces.

3021d ago

If clothes made the film, Ben Affleck's pedestrian adaptation of the 2012 Dennis Lehane crime novel "Live by Night" would, in gangster terms, qualify as a made movie.

3021d ago

Some mediocre movies just don’t make sense; you can never understand why they went into production in the first place. The script was clearly a mess when someone bought it, it was never going to be profitable, and no one involved had the skill to pull it off. Why did they even bother?

3021d ago

Overstuffed and disappointing, Live By Night wastes a strong supporting cast. It's not a total loss, but it doesn’t hold up against the rest of Affleck’s filmography.

3021d ago

Live by Night is a messy, unfocused movie about ambition, lost ideals, corrupt men and a thief whose idea of life on his own terms means pulling the trigger.

3021d ago

'Live by Night': Ben Affleck's gangster flick a stylish misfire.

3021d ago

Narcissism dogs Affleck’s self-direction which is too forgiving of his dubious character and relegates its female stars to sacrificial roles.

3021d ago

Ben Affleck's immaculately dressed, shrug-worthy Prohibition dud.

3021d ago

Disillusioned by his experience fighting in World War I, cop’s son Joe Coughlin (Ben Affleck) becomes a small-time hood operating in Boston. But after falling foul of Irish gangster Albert White (Robert Glenister), he winds up working for the Mafia in Tampa, Florida, fuelled by vengeance and ambition.

3021d ago

Ben Affleck debuted as a director with his well-received 2007 adaptation of a Dennis Lehane novel, Gone Baby Gone, and he returns to Lehane again in his fourth film behind the camera. But before a foot of film was ever shot on Live by Night, Affleck had already made a decision that would be the film’s undoing. He cast himself as the lead.

3021d ago

Live by Night adds a new wrinkle to the well-traveled terrain of the mafia film: the woke gangster.

3021d ago

The actor-writer-director’s homage to vintage gangster movies isn’t a complete failure but it’s an offer you can refuse.

3021d ago