A few weeks ago, Aubrey and I sat down and watched two of the short films that the Safdie brothers made in college ("We're Going to the Zoo" and "The Acquaintances of a Lonely John") and we really enjoyed both of them. Each offers tender, warm moments of banality juxtaposed against the harshness of daily living; in one case a hitchhiker orchestrates a dine and dash for the joy of his drivers only to run back inside to secretly pay, and in the other a pair of men who share an apartment building furiously dash to make it through a door the other is holding open. Both films have gas station attendants that you will remember until your last breath. Coming from that base, "Good Time" is tough medicine to swallow, but boy does it do the job.
"Good Time" is a crime thriller slash drama slash descent-into-madness. The complementary film that most easily comes to mind is "Enter the Void," though it trades the Freudian psychodrama and acid-drenched abstraction for fraternal contemplation and acid-drenched reality. It starts with therapy and ends with therapy, and nearly every other one of the films ninety-something minutes is about as far from therapy as it comes, a brutal look at the lives of some perennial fuckups navigating a perennially fucked up world.
Two brothers, one handicapped mentally, the other morally, rob a bank. Connie, the amoral older brother played with gusto by Robert Pattinson, fucks up a good thing and gets his brother Nick (Benny Safdie) into jail. Typical crime drama stuff, but with just an incredible kinetic energy as it moves from long sequences of tight close-ups to bustling and busy chases and prison fights. Nick gets sent to the hospital. Connie hatches a plan to bail his brother out using the stolen money, but comes up short. He manipulates an older woman played by the great Jennifer Jason Leigh into using her mother's credit card, but that doesn't work out either, so he just slinks his way into the hospital and wheels his brother away.
At this point, Safdie more or less vanishes from his own film and finds Pattinson a new partner, the appropriately named Buddy Duress. Buddy plays an ex-convict named Ray, a man who spends his first day out on parole getting drunk, high, and chased by the police before ultimately winding up back in police custody after jumping out of a moving taxi. Connie accidentally rescued Ray from the hospital believing he was Nick, so now the two must work together to foil the lawmen on their tails. There are a few more important details I'm omitting, and I won't spoil the film's gripping final act, but it goes without saying that if you like crime stories this is probably up your alley on narrative alone.
Robert Pattinson gets the most buzz for his performance, and rightfully so. He's given tons of liberty to Act, and Act he does. Connie's sociopathic disregard for everyone around him juxtaposes fantastically with his affinity for dogs. He feints at being a well-meaning older brother and protector, but is unable to accept and love his brother for who he is. He enchants and entrances women young and old alike, charming everyone in sight even as he seethes with ill intent. He is at once both a foolish cad and a cunning operator. Not many actors have the look and grace to make a total piece of shit like Connie believable, but Pattinson is more than up to the task.
My favorite scenes, though are almost all stolen by Duress, especially his madcap recounting of his one day out of jail. If Martin Scorsese were younger, Buddy would be on his way to a long career as a universally-beloved character actor. He's just such a likable goombah, a man of the people despite or perhaps because of his criminal tendencies. We never learn what he was in prison for (though we can certainly make a close guess) or what his life was like outside of a small cadre of his friends, but we feel like we've known him all our lives in his short time on screen. I hope this guy gets to play a big part in Hollywood going forward.
The visuals are kept stylistically tight throughout, with whoever is talking usually doing so in close-up and with a sharp eye for color, contrast, and brightness. The story gradually moves from daytime to night and so to do the interiors smoothly transition from the brightly lit interiors of the hospital and prison to a dark and eerily lit home and an absolutely trippy theme park funhouse. Connie dyes his hair a shocking blonde that looks absolutely fantastic under pink and red neon lighting. There's no use pretending that this isn't a loving homage to the 80s, but it's done with reverence and talent rather than reference and tack. Everything is done with a sense of driving purpose, pushing you into the uncomfortable subjectivity of a man no sensible person would aspire to be.
The score is absolutely fantastic and calls to mind "Drive," another pulse-pounding electronica masterpiece of cinema sound. It perfectly captures the feeling of the walls closing in, of night in New York City, and of the 80s crime cinema it's paying respect to. Even if the film doesn't sound up your alley, I recommend looking up the music. Gucci Chanel makes a brief and hilarious appearance and the ending credits song, written and performed by Iggy Pop channeling his inner Johnny Cash, is fantastic. It accompanies the devatastating credits sequence perfectly.
I'm pushing way past my original intended word count, perhaps because writing about the film has only expanded my love for it, so I'm gonna wrap it up quickly. If you like crime films you'll almost certainly come away with a positive experience in some respect or another. Doubly so if you liked "Drive" or "Enter the Void" or any of the Jean-Pierre Melville's various "crime after the crime" flicks. If you can't handle a protagonist being a bad guy that you're made to inhabit for ninety minutes, grow up or go watch some Disney shit, whatever.
9.5/10
