Live by Night
Directed by Ben Affleck
- crime
- drama
- history
The story
A group of Boston-bred gangsters set up shop in balmy Florida during the Prohibition era, facing off against the competition and the Ku Klux Klan.
What it’s like
Warm, sun-bleached Florida under a hard glare, with the grit of 1920s Prohibition running through it: dusty streets, rum-runner boats slipping through humid night, smoky backrooms lit by lamps and sodium-yellow streetlight. Ben Affleck's direction favours broad, handsomely composed period frames, orchestral swells, and a steady, old-fashioned movie-making pace that lets scenes breathe between bursts of sudden violence. The mood is brooding and romantic, a mix of noir melancholy and sweeping, somewhat stately drama, with a sense of a man's fortunes rising and falling in the heat. The people are caught in loyalty and ambition, and the arc follows a hardened outsider whose hard-won toughness is tested by love and betrayal. Intensity is moderate to high: gunfights and beatings land with real force, there are brief scenes of Klan menace and racial cruelty, and some sexual content and strong language, but no gore for its own sake. It suits a slow weekend evening, or anyone who wants a crime saga with a Southern heat and period texture, and fits viewers who like old-school gangster films with emotional weight.
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