Movie Review: Live by Night

Live by Night

Directed by: Ben Affleck. 

Written by: Ben Affleck based on the novel by Dennis Lehane.

Starring: Ben Affleck (Joe Coughlin), Elle Fanning (Loretta Figgis), Brendan Gleeson (Thomas Coughlin), Chris Messina (Dion Bartolo), Sienna Miller (Emma Gould), Zoe Saldana (Graciella Corrales), Chris Cooper (Irving Figgis), Robert Glenister (Albert White), Titus Welliver (Tim Hickey), Remo Girone (Maso Pescatore), Max Casella (Digger Pescatore).

 

The best comparison to Ben Affleck as actor/director right now is probably Kevin Costner in the 1990s. Costner was a huge star at the time – who became an Oscar winning director for Dances with Wolves – but couldn’t really hit those heights again. As an actor, Costner was – even at the height of his fame – more suited to being the bland central character – the guy who keeps the film on an even keel, as so that everyone around him can go a little crazier – think The Untouchables or JFK. The good news for Ben Affleck is that Live by Night – his fourth film as a director (one more than Costner ever made) is nowhere near the disaster that Waterworld (which Costner is not credited as a director on – although, he did some of it on the film) or The Postman (which he did direct) was – it’s just not a very good film, which is disappointing coming from Affleck, who chose this to be his follow-up to the Oscar winning Argo. The biggest problem with the film – and there are many, but the one that sinks it – is that Affleck the actor just isn’t all that interesting in the central role. As an actor, Affleck, like Costner, is best when he’s kind of bland – and holding the center of the film, like he did in Argo. It’s no coincidence that Affleck’s best performance is in David Fincher’s Gone Girl, where he is essentially playing a bland yet charming idiot who has no idea what the hell is going on – that role played right into Affleck’s strengths as an actor. In Live by Night, he’s already handicapped by the fact that he’s too old for the role (in the Dennis Lehane novel the film is based on, the character in his early 20s) – but the film tries to explain that away. The bigger problem is that he is playing a brooding character – a guy who keeps things bottled up inside him. Some actors, like ironically Casey Affleck, do a brilliant job of suggesting a whole world going on beneath a calm surface. Ben Affleck isn’t one of those – when he’s brooding, he’s just dull. It sinks the movie, which has some good period detail and action set pieces.

 

The film takes place in the 1920s and 1930s – and Affleck is Joe Coughlin, son of the powerful member of the Boston Police Department (Brendan Gleason – good in an all too brief role) – who nonetheless, becomes an “outlaw” because he has an aversion to authority. He falls in love with Emma Gould (Sienna Miller, going over the top with the Irish accent, but at least having fun) – even though she is the girlfriend of a powerful gangster, Albert White (Robert Glenister – who would twirl a mustache if he had one). Things, of course, go horribly awry – Joe ends up in jail, with some powerful enemies, and Emma is killed in a car accident. When he gets out, he heads down to Florida – where he ends up the most powerful gangster in town – falling in love again, this time with Graciela (Zoe Saldana) – and running afoul of more powerful people – some the same ones from Boston who already hate him.

 

As a director, Affleck is (like Costner) a classicist – doing a style that we don’t see enough in movies today that harkens back to the studio era. Affleck clearly has affection for all those gangster movies of the 1930s – or set there – and his film is full of visual references to them. The cinematography, costume design and production design clearly bring to mind films like The Godfather (or want to) – and for the most part, the technical aspects of the film is impressive. Unfortunately, in this case, the similarities to the great films of the bygone era is only skin deep – Affleck nails the look, but he doesn’t nail the feeling. The film plods along in its first act, hitting one expected note after another. When something comes along that feels genuinely different and exciting – Elle Fanning as the daughter of a police captain, returned to Tampa from a life of debauchery in L.A., to become a born again leader, and her father (Chris Cooper), falling into religious madness – its dispensed of far too quickly, so we can get back to the plodding main plot of Affleck butting heads with other gangsters, and brooding about it. Fanning and Cooper are great in the movie – the only two performances that truly are – but they come and go too quickly. Many of the other actors, no matter how talented, are given little to nothing to do – no one more so than Zoe Saldana, who looks great in her period costumes – and that’s about all you can say about the role.

 

There are two good action sequences – an early car chase and an climatic gun battle – that Affleck handles well, perhaps because they’re among the only times Affleck not very good dialogue isn’t being uttered.

 

I don’t believe that Affleck’s directing career will go the same way Costner’s did – that was pretty much over after The Postman, although he brought it together one last time for 2003’s Open Range (probably my favorite of his directing efforts). Affleck has shown a lot of talent in the directors chair –even if I don’t think he’s topped his debut film Gone Baby Gone yet (The Town and Argo are both very good though). He may even make a good Batman – if the movies he’s in get any better. Still, I cannot help but wonder if Affleck would be better served just directing from now on – and not pulling double duty. A different actor at the center of Live By Night may not have made this a great movie – it would still be overlong, with too many characters who aren’t given anything much to do – but it may have helped make it a good movie. In short, I think Affleck the director needs someone different than Affleck the actor at the center of his films, even if he’s going to continue to move forward – and he’s clearly more talented behind the camera than in front of it.

Movie Review: Argo

Argo

Directed by: Ben Affleck.

Written by: Chris Terrio based on the article by Joshuah Bearman.

Starring: Ben Affleck (Tony Mendez), Bryan Cranston (Jack O'Donnell), Alan Arkin (Lester Siegel), John Goodman (John Chambers), Victor Garber (Ken Taylor), Tate Donovan (Bob Anders), Clea DuVall (Cora Lijek), Scoot McNairy (Joe Stafford), Rory Cochrane (Lee Schatz), Christopher Denham (Mark Lijek), Kerry Bishé (Kathy Stafford), Kyle Chandler (Hamilton Jordan), Chris Messina (Malinov), Zeljko Ivanek (Robert Pender), Titus Welliver (Bates), Keith Szarabajka (Adam Engell), Bob Gunton (Cyrus Vance), Richard Kind (Max Klein), Taylor Schilling (Christine Mendez).

A lot of actors eventually try their hand at directing. Some do it simply as a vanity project or to prove to themselves they can actually do it. And some become filmmakers whose directing career eventually becomes even better than their acting career – Clint Eastwood for instance. Ben Affleck is more of the second type of actor. A few years ago, Affleck, the actor, had a string of disappointments on his resume and was most likely disappointed with how things had gone for the past few years. So he directed Gone Baby Gone (2007), a wonderful little crime movie that turned out to be much deeper than its genre roots suggested. He followed that up with The Town (2010), which was another fine crime film. With those two films, Affleck proved himself to be a director to watch – one with a definite skill and style. If he hadn’t quite crafted a great movie yet, he was surely on his way to doing so. His third film, Argo, is that great film.

Argo is a thriller, that if it wasn’t true, you couldn’t possibly believe it. As everyone knows, in 1979 Iranians stormed the American embassy and took all the workers their hostage. Six of those workers however escaped out a back door and ended up hiding in the Canadian ambassador’s house. No one knew they were there, and it had to stay that way. Eventually though, these six workers had to get out of the country – and no one has any idea how to do that. That is until Tony Mendez (Affleck), who specializes in getting people out of places that shouldn’t be, comes up with a gloriously absurd idea – the six embassy workers are really a Canadian film crew, scouting locations for a Star Wars rip-off that needs an exotic location, deserts, etc. Why wouldn’t a film crew want to shoot a movie in Iran during a hostage crisis?

It turns out making a fake movie isn’t as easy as you would think. The key to getting away with any lie is that the details have to be accurate. And so before he heads to Iran, Tony heads to L.A. He meets up with John Chambers (John Goodman), an Oscar winning make-up man and Lester Siegel (Alan Arkin), a producer. They need to make Argo, the movie they are supposedly making, look real – they have a script, a poster, storyboards and even host a big event in Hollywood and get written up in Variety. Then Tony heads to Iran to train the embassy workers on their jobs, so they can head to the airport and all fly out together.

In some respects, Argo is almost two different movies – both of them great. On one hand, you have a Hollywood comedy not unlike Wag the Dog, where a Washington insider goes to a Hollywood producer to create a fake war, and the scenes in LA are mined for great comedic effect. John Goodman and especially Alan Arkin are great in their roles as Hollywood men, doing something not for fame or money, but simply because it is the right thing to do. These scenes are great for film buffs.

The other movie is much more delicate and hard to pull off – a thriller without chase sequences, shootouts or really any violence of any kind. It is easy to manufacture drama, and get audiences perched on the edge of their seats with those types of scenes, but Argo contains none of them. Instead, it is a breathless thriller where seemingly simple actions are heightened to an almost unbearable degree of suspense – where a simple questioning by the Imperial Guard becomes nail biting. This is where Affleck’s real accomplishment lay.

Affleck also casts his movie well – even the smallest roles are seemingly played by actors we recognize, and together they make up one of the best ensembles of the years. Arkin and Goodman are great, yes, as the Hollywood people. Even better though is Bryan Cranston, the best actor on TV right now, as Affleck’s CIA boss who is quick thinking, intelligent and has an acid tongued sense of humor, even in the most intense moments. Scoot McNairy is also wonderful as one of the embassy workers who doesn’t think they should be leaving.

Argo is gripping, exciting, funny entertainment. It’s rare to get someone attempting that mixture in a film – even more rare for a film to pull it. If Gone Baby Gone and The Town showed Affleck was a director with promise, Argo fulfills that promise.

Movie Review: The Town

The Town *** ½
Directed by: Ben Affleck.
Written By: Peter Craig and Ben Affleck & Aaron Stockard based on the novel by Chuck Hogan. Starring: Ben Affleck (Doug MacRay), Rebecca Hall (Claire Keesey), Jon Hamm (FBI S.A. Adam Frawley), Jeremy Renner (James Coughlin), Blake Lively (Krista Coughlin), Slaine (Albert 'Gloansy' Magloan), Owen Burke (Desmond Elden), Titus Welliver (Dino Ciampa), Pete Postlethwaite (Fergus 'Fergie' Colm), Chris Cooper (Stephen MacRay).

Sometimes I think we don’t quite appreciate a perfectly executed genre piece. Ben Affleck’s The Town is a heist movie that really does do nothing all that original. There is nothing here that you haven’t seen in other heist movies - like John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle, Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing or Michael Mann’s Heat to name but three of the best the grenre has produced. But rarely do you see a genre film that it delivered with this type of skill, both in front of and behind the camera. No, it’s not original. Yes, it’s pretty much a perfect example of the genre it belongs to.

The movie takes place in the Charlestown neighbourhood of Boston, a neighbourhood that apparently produces more armed robbers than anywhere else in the country. One of those crews in led by Doug McCray (Ben Affleck) with the help of his slightly psychotic right hand man James (Jeremy Renner). We see them at work almost right away, robbing a bank with expert proficiency, and taking the bank manager Claire (Rebecca Hall) hostage in case the cops come after them. They don’t, and they let her go, but Doug cannot quite let her go. There is something different about her, and so he arranges to bump into her, and the two begin dating, with her never expecting the truth. Meanwhile, FBI Agent Frawley (Jon Hamm) wants to catch this crew, who is impressed by the professionalism of this crew.

And that’s all I am going to say about the plot of the movie, because one of the joys is to watch this tight thrillers plot slowly unfold. Affleck, who impressed me a great deal with his directorial debut Gone, Baby, Gone three years ago, builds on that one and has made another solid crime drama. Adapting Chuck Hogan’s great novel, Prince of Thieves, Affleck and his co-writers have boiled that big novel down to its essentials and has made a tightly plotted, exciting movie highlighted by great performances. Affleck himself has rarely been better as an actor than he is here as McCray, the thief who wants to leave it all behind. In Rebecca Hall, he has found a sympathetic female lead - one that it is not hard to believe that he would be able to leave everything for. Jon Hamm is solid as the straight arrow FBI agent, and Pete Postlewaite and Chris Cooper provide what are essentially cameo roles, but make them memorable. Best of all is Jeremy Renner, who exudes danger as his right hand man with a short fuse. And Blake Lively is also impressive as Affleck’s white trash ex - leaving behind any memories you may have of her is Gossip Girl. Whenever that show is over, she’s going to have a real career as an actress.
The Town doesn’t break any new ground as a heist movie. It doesn’t quite rise to the level of Heat - Michael Mann’s masterpiece that is an obvious influence on this film. But then again, so few movies even come close to that film. I can’t think of any higher praise than to say that this film at least deserves comparison to that one. Ben Affleck has proven once again that he is a real filmmaker. I look forward to seeing what he decides to do next behind the camera. I guarantee you he has a masterpiece or two in him.