Live by Night is adapted, directed and stars Ben Affleck as Joe Coughlin a former WW1 soldier who comes home and becomes an outlaw only to cross the wrong gangster after serving a prison sentence he then heads to Florida to head up a Rum operation the very type that could make him powerful.
I have been ridiculously excited to see this movie mainly because of Ben as I've been a big fan of him as a director (I think he's one of the best of his generation) and also his most recent film the Accountant was my favourite film of last year so could Ben continue his good run or do the unthinkable and let me down.
Happily he does the former as I really enjoyed this movie, I thought Ben once again did a great job as a director and he shows in this movie that he has a deep understanding of his craft, there is also some really nice cinematography by Robert Richardson, a great score by Harry Gregson-Williams, costumes by Jacqueline West and a slew of great performances especially by Elle Fanning, Zoe Saldana, Chris Cooper, Brendan Gleeson and Chris Messina.
I do have to say however that the films editing does at times feel a little choppy in terms of scenes feeling very undercut in terms of their impact and key plot points at times feel skipped over and pasted with a voiceover I wonder if this movie would have really benefited from a 2.5 to 3 hour running time like a lot of great Gangster films which like this movie were very ambitious but had the long runtime to really develop its storytelling hopefully this movie gets an Extended Edition for the DVD release as I feel it would really benefit from one.
So that was Live by Night which was well worth the wait and like Split and Edge of 17 kicks the year in films off very nicely, 4 out of 5.
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