After a string of critical successes (Gone Baby Gone, The Town, the Oscar-winning Argo), Ben Affleck found his first flop with Live By Night (2016). This adaptation of Dennis Lehane's novel is a serviceable gangster saga, but lacks much to distinguish it from other, better movies.Joe Coughlin (Ben Affleck), son of Boston's police superintendent (Brendan Gleeson), becomes a gangster during the Roaring Twenties. After a botched robbery and failed romance with Emma Gould (Sienna Miller), moll of kingpin Albert White (Robert Glenister), Coughlin relocates to Tampa, Florida where he takes over the local rum market. Coughlin matches wits with crooked Sheriff Figgis (Chris Cooper), his evangelist daughter (Elle Fanning), the Ku Klux Klan and assorted other crime figures, while romancing Cuban-American Graciela (Zoe Saldana).
If nothing else, Live by Night is handsomely mounted as any historical drama, with slick costumes, expensive sets and immersive period detail. Affleck spares no expense in rendering Lehane's Prohibition-era world, handling the movie's look, feel and action scenes exceedingly well. While much of the violence is restricted to montages and quick blips of violence, it does feature two expansive set pieces: a robbery culminating in a guns-blazing car chase early on, and a climactic gunfight in a hotel.
Unfortunately, Live by Night's story offers few surprises. While trimming Lehane's novel of unnecessary subplots (Joe helping with a coup against the Cuban government, his brother's Hollywood adventures), Affleck's script sticks to the more familiar elements of romance, betrayal and violence. While there are interesting characters in the margins (especially the Figgises, whose degenerating sanity becomes a major plot point), Joe is the same inexpressive brick Affleck usually plays, lacking any real development or depth: we don't buy his desire to go straight as anything but a plot contrivance. The movie culminates in a note of bitter, anticlimactic sorrow that should be powerful, but since we don't care about Joe it mostly leaves us numb.
Gangster movies since Little Caesar have always struggled with ways to make us root for their protagonists. Besides Joe's romantic entanglements, Affleck pits him against stock villains who make him seem virtuous: Klansmen who resent his relationship with the colored Graciela, Italian mobsters spouting Irish slurs, abusive cops and treacherous rum runners. The Godfather and its sequels get away with it because their protagonists, while morally qualified in the extreme, are compellingly rich, interesting despite their flaws. The movie wants us to see Joe as a swell guy for killing racists and mobsters, and it doesn't work.
Ben Affleck gives his usual performance of inexpressive, mopey glowering: while occasionally a serviceable actor, he needs a director who isn't himself to bring out his best side. The supporting cast rarely rises above the mediocre script: Sienna Miller and Zoe Saldana flounder about as one-note love interests (at least Miller's similar character in The Lost City of Z had a personality), while Brendan Gleeson, Chris Cooper and Robert Glenister struggle to wring pathos out of cardboard supporting roles. Remo Girone's treacherous crime lord and Elle Fanning's troubled evangelist make more positive impressions.
With its exquisite costumes and compelling action scenes, Live by Night is certainly watchable for a Sunday cable viewing. Yet its aspirations to be something more than a period shoot-'em-up fall flat, because it lacks the depth or investment in its characters to be really memorable.
