Author Dennis Lehane has a good track record when it comes to seeing his work adapated for the big screen. Mystic River (2003), Gone Baby Gone (2007), Shutter Island (2010) and The Drop (2014), based on his short story Animal Rescue have all been very well made films that have stayed faithful to their source material. Live by Night is no exception to this rule. Ben Affleck, who also directed Gone Baby Gone, takes the helm once again and delivers a solid, if flawed period Gangster Tale which stays true to the novel on which it’s based.

 

Beginning in Boston in the 1920’s, when Prohibition was at it’s height. The story centres around Irish-American Joe Coughlin, a returning WW1 veteran and son of Boston Police Captain Thomas Coughlin (Brendan Gleeson). Upon his return he unwittingly gets caught up in a war for control of the city’s rum running operations between the Irish Mob, led by Albert White (Robert Glenister) and the Italian Mafia, headed by Maso Pescatore (Remo Girone). Matters get complicated even further when Joe begins having an affair with Albert’s girlfriend, Emma Gould – Sienna Miller. After narrowly avoiding certain death at the hands of White and a stint in jail Joe switches allegiances and begins working for Pescatore. Joe gets sent to Florida to become head of the Mafia’s operations down there and to get his revenge on White by by effectively driving him out of business in the State.

 

Live By Night has been received negatively by many critics and denounced as being a far cry from genre classics such as The Godfather and Goodfellas. This may well be the case but not all the criticism levelled at the film has been entirely deserving. For a start it is important to take into account it’s source. Lehane’s novel is by no means a literary masterwork itself. Essentially it is a piece of pulp fiction. Entertaining, well written pulp but pulp fiction all the same. When considering this it seems unreasonable to go into the film expecting a cinematic masterpiece. In spite of this   Affleck has however constructed a film which never really has a boring moment and should certainly keep genre fans eyes on the screen.

 

The character of Joe Coughlin feels like a composite of Outlaw characters who featured in gangster films that came along before Francis Ford Coppolla’s seminal 1972 masterwork. The James Cagney films from the 1930’s along with Bonnie and Clyde and The St Valentine’s Day Massacre both 1967, are all ones which spring to mind. Gangster fans will no doubt find much to enjoy in these allusions. In addition to this, as he did with The Town (2010), Affleck demonstrates strong, directorial flare when it comes to staging action sequences. Although Live By Night is by no means an action heavy film, it does boast an exhilarating car chase through Boston and a thrilling, final shoot out in a Florida hotel. Plenty of tension is also generated out of the numerous face off’s that Joe has with his enemies throughout the film.

 

The film isn’t without it’s weaknesses however. By trying to faithfully recreate  Lehane’s novel and draw in as many of its themes as possible, it is often that the viewer is left with a feeling that characters and subjects are left underdeveloped. Joe’s conflict with the Ku Klux Clan for instance, who resent him for his Catholicism, feels rushed. This was a topic that was explored and developed with much greater time and depth in the HBO series Boardwalk Empire, with which Live By Night shares it’s historical context. That is however a distinct advantage with the serialised nature of many current tv shows, the makers are given a much greater amount of time with which to explore and expand upon multiple themes. Terrific as the performances are from the supporting cast Gleeson, Glenister, Girone and Miller to name but a few, they are given far too little in the way of screen time. It’s therefore impossible to shake the feeling that the audience has in someway been short changed as it would have been great to have seen more in the way of character development given to them. In addition to this, as good as Affleck’s lead performance is, anyone who is familiar with the previously mentioned The Town, will probably not be able to shake the feeling that he is simply playing a period version of his character of Doug McCrae from that film. This makes one wander as to just how much breadth and depth Affleck has as an actor when it comes to these types of roles.

 

While it is undoubtedly fun to see a homage to a much older style of gangster film getting made, what has to be considered is that Martin Scorsese went to great lengths with his films Goodfellas and the subsequent Casino, to dispel the romantic image that had grown up around the mob figure and instead capture the vicious reality of that lifestyle. Most subsequent films of the genre have continued to develop on the themes established in these two. Even the 2015, Johnny Depp Starring, White Bulger Biopic, Black Mass, while being guilty, at times of slipping into sensationalism, nonetheless did well at capturing the brutality of Bulger and the South Boston Winter Hill Gang. There is a very mythic quality surrounding Live By Night and Affleck’s character in particular. As a result of this it is difficult to believe that these characters may have once existed in real life. It is this lack of believability that doesn’t always rest very easily with the seriousness of the film’s thematic content. In this sense Live By Night comes across as a regressive rather than progressive example of the genre.

 

Overall though, the excellent performances, thrilling action and gorgeous set design and cinematography are more than enough to make up for it’s shortcomings. Not a classic film by any stretch of the imagination but certainly an entertaining one.