Live by Night
Ben Affleck is back behind the camera for a star-studded adaptation of the Dennis Lehane novel of the same name. Set in the Prohibition Era, the movie centers around a group of individuals and their dealings in the world of organized crime.
26 April 1947, Pontiac, Michigan, USA
16 November 1961, Orange, New Jersey, USA
16 June 1988, Worcester, Massachusetts, USA
28 October 1988, El Paso, Texas, USA
5 December 1965, San Alejo, La Union, El Salvador
9 April 1998, Conyers, Georgia, USA
March 08, 2017
A focused and insightful character study, it's not. But reframed as a genre exercise, a pulpy throwback comic book... the film is an absorbing diversion.January 16, 2017
One of the film's final set pieces is so wonderfully staged that it reminds you what skill Affleck has with the camera. Next time, he should perhaps confine himself behind it.January 13, 2017
It sure looks great - it was lensed by Tarantino regular Robert Richardson - and its gangster-movie tropes are familiar, yet welcome.March 01, 2017
You can practically feel it straining to become a classic of the genre but in the end, it feels more like Miller's Crossing cosplay than anything else.May 09, 2017
That speaks well of Affleck -- the screenwriter -- in demonstrating maturity by offering up more nuanced characters than we generally expect from the average gangster movie. Still, that maturity doesn't mitigate the shortcomings of the film's star.January 17, 2017
You probably won't turn it off when it comes on cable. But the material needs to be bigger, more momentous, as well as more intimate.January 13, 2017
Live by Night is a solid, interesting but sprawling and often overwrought gangster picture.March 23, 2017
And while the story is sprawling, covering a decade, and filled with beautiful settings, costumes, and stars, it just never comes together to be the kind of epic crime drama it's emulatingFebruary 20, 2017
Live By Night is a far better film than it's been given credit for.January 13, 2017
Here, the outlaw-as-hero trick just doesn't work; we can't both sympathize with Coughlin's moral quandaries and thrill to his crimes.February 23, 2017
If Sad Affleck didn't already exist, Live By Night might've made the meme happen anyway.January 13, 2017
A footnote in the history of cinematic mob stories.