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In 2007, Ben Affleck kicked off a promising new career as a director with Gone Baby Gone, which was based on a Dennis Lehane novel that takes place in Affleck’s beloved Boston. For his fourth feature, Live by Night, Affleck travels south from Boston to tackle another of Lehane’s novels.
Live by Night follows Affleck’s Joe Coughlin as he builds his criminal enterprise in the 1920s. After returning from war in France, Joe teams up with a couple of friends to join in the lawlessness of the Prohibition Era. But when he falls in love with the wrong girl, he ends up in over his head. Fueled by grief and a need for revenge, he begins working for one of Boston’s top mobsters, running a lucrative rum operation in Tampa. But it’s only a matter of time before his world of guns and speakeasies and his shaky alliances catch up to him.
Whether he’s filming in the streets of his hometown of Boston or far away in Tehran, Affleck definitely loves his settings. Here, he begins by exploring the streets and underground clubs and run-down warehouses of Prohibition Era Boston before journeying to Tampa, where the climate and culture offer a very different atmosphere. It’s certainly an unexpected location—one that’s far from one of the typical Hollywood settings.
The story, meanwhile, does its own kind of traveling. What starts out as a tale of revenge eventually gets sidetracked once Joe arrives in Florida. It doesn’t take long for him to accomplish what seems to be his original goal, so the story then shifts its focus to his growing operations—to the politics, alliances, and occasionally blackmail involved in running an illegal rum business. Admittedly, it can be intriguing stuff—especially where the town’s straight-laced but surprisingly flexible sheriff (Chris Cooper) is involved. But, after a while, Joe’s dealings with Klansmen and revival preachers start to feel more like distractions than logical steps in the unfolding story.
While the story and setting can sometimes be surprising, however, the character isn’t especially interesting. He’s basically the typical criminal with a heart of gold, who struggles with some of the aspects of his chosen career. Affleck’s performance makes it clear that Joe isn’t entirely comfortable in his skin. His face is often strained; his smile rarely reaches his eyes. But it all feels so forced and wooden that viewers may find it difficult to care about his fate.
With its conflicted characters and period settings, Live by Night often hints at the fascinating crime drama that it set out to be. But it never really narrows its focus enough to make it more than just another gangster movie. And, in the end, it’s easily the weakest of Affleck’s films as a director.
Listen to the review on Reel Discovery:
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