“Live By Night’s” stylish story of gangsters and redemption sees Ben Affleck reteam with crime writer Dennis Lehane. Their last collaboration, “Gone Baby Gone,” was a story of two detectives embroiled in a professional and personal crisis. This time around the personal and professional intermingle once again, but from the other side of the badge.
Affleck, who stars, directs and wrote the screenplay, is Joe Coughlin, the son of a Boston police captain (Brendan Gleeson) who returned from WWI an outlaw, determined not to take orders from anyone ever again. “No man shall rule another man’s life,” he says. A botched bank robbery lands him in jail, at a reduced sentence thanks to his father’s influence. Jail is a breeze, worse for him is his romantic involvement with flapper Emma Gould (Sienna Miller) who also happens to be the girlfriend of powerful Boston gangster Albert White (Robert Glenister).
Sprung from the lockup and beaten to a pulp by White’s men, Coughlin teams with Boston’s other gang boss, Maso Pescatore (Remo Girone). He’s sent to Ybor City, Florida with the task of taking over the lucrative prohibition bootleg booze business, currently run by White. To that end he leaves a trail of blood and bodies but when this demon rum purveyor tries to find a legitimate way to make cash by building a casino, a religious zealot (Elle Fanning) puts a crimp in his less-than-godly pursuits and interests.
“Live by Night” is a muted, sombre film punctuated by Baptists, bullets, broads and booze. Affleck creates a hard-boiled look at gangster life complete with corruption, betrayal and all the usual crime genre tropes but opens it up to include passion, family and redemption.
Coughlin is an interesting character, a man who coveted his amateur crook status and only turns pro—in other words, becomes a gangster—when he is painted into a corner. He’ll gun you down, but he’s no Scarface. Instead Affleck plays him as a stoic man who leads with his heart and only resorts to violence when all other options are exhausted. Later, when his legacy of violence comes back to haunt him, it packs a wallop.
There’s a lot going on in Ybor City. “Live By Night” tackles racism—the KKK plays a big role in the Florida section of the story—religion—thanks to Fanning’s troubled but angelic character—love—in the form of Graciella Corrales (Zoe Saldana)—loyalty and betrayal. It’s a literary stew of themes, held together by the violence and pulpier aspects of the movie.
Richard sits in with Erin Paul to have a look at the special Wednesday releases, “Passengers” with Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt, the videogame flick “Assassin’s Creed” with Micheal Fassbender and the animated sing-a-long “Sing.”
“Assassin’s Creed” may have the highest end cast ever for a movie based on a videogame. Ripe with Oscar nominees and winners like Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard, Jeremy Irons, Brendan Gleeson and Charlotte Rampling, it’s the poshest piffle to ever leap from the gaming consul to the big screen.
Based on the wildly popular Ubisoft videogames of the same name, the movie is a standalone that does not follow the storyline of the games.
When we first see Fassbender it’s the time of the Spanish Inquisition. He is Aguilar de Nerha, head of a stealthy brotherhood of assassins charged with making sure that rivals Knights Templar don’t get their hands on a holy relic called The Apple of Eden. “We work in the dark to service the light!” The stakes are high as the mystical device contains “the seed of man’s first disobedience.”
Jump forward to 2016. Fassbender is now Cal Lynch, a career criminal set on a bad path as a child when he saw his father murder his mother. On death row for the murder of a pimp he is to be executed. Instead he is whisked away by multinational corporate conglomerate Abstergo. “What do you want from me?” Callum asks. “Your past,” says lead scientist of the Animus project at Abstergo Foundation Sophia Rikkin (Cotillard).
Using something called the Animus Abstergo unlocks Cal’s genetic memory, essentially seeing through Aguilar de Nerha’s 15th century eyes as they look for clues as to the location of the Apple.
It’s ancestry.ca gone wild! It’s also an almost incomprehensible story about ancient rivalries and, more confusingly, “the genetic code for free will.” What, exactly does that mean? Who knows? The plot, such that it is, is essentially a load of gobbledygook that fills the gaps between the action scenes. Plot points are delivered with Fassbender’s trademarked intense glare and solemn intonations from Irons and the rest of the cast, so they must mean something, right? If you figure it out, let me know.
Canadian actor Taylor Kitsch discusses his new film ‘The Grand Seduction’ with “Canada AM’s” Richard Crouse, and how he feels about Newfoundland and the people there.
“We’ve been looking for a doctor eight years,” says the mayor of Tickle Head, Newfoundland in the new Don McKellar comedy “The Grand Seduction.”
“Well,” replies Murray (Brendan Gleeson), with perfect logic, “let’s stop looking and start finding.”
And that’s just what they do, using every underhanded and dirty trick in the book. These are decent people who try and do the right thing, but they also understand that sometimes you have to bend the rules to get what you want.
Tickle Head, “a small harbor with a big heart,” has had more of its share of hardship since the bottom fell out of the fishery. Unemployment is high and the only jobs are “in town” in St. John’s, a ferry ride away.
The town fathers have a bid on a petrochemical byproduct repurposing plant that makes… well, it doesn’t matter, as they say in the film, it makes jobs. That’s what’s important. One key element is missing, a doctor. The factory deal won’t go through unless there is a local doctor.
When Paul Lewis (Taylor Kitsch), a city slicker plastic surgeon, lands in the harbour for a month long residency, the entire place (population 121) bands together to convince him to stay… by any means necessary.
Not everyone in town is on board. Kathleen (Liane Balaban) doesn’t want an oil company to set up shop in her harbor and certainly doesn’t want to be used as bait to attract the new doctor.
A remake of the French-Canadian hit “La Grande Seduction” is a comedy with a poignant edge. The set-up is outrageous—they spy on Dr. Lewis, tap his phone and even stage a tournament of cricket, his favorite game—but this is a story of a town fighting for survival of their town and their way of life.
There are plenty of laughs along the way—Gordon Pinsent is particularly effective as the deadpan Simon, who has never left Tickle Head—but the heart and soul of the film is in its fondness for the people and their harbor.
The Grand Seduction premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last September, but the movie’s star was more concerned about an audience a little east of there.
“I felt they would let us know if they didn’t like it,” says Brendan Gleeson.
The film is set in a small Newfoundland harbour named Tickle Head where the town fathers have a bid on a petrochemical byproduct repurposing plant that makes … well, it doesn’t matter, as they say in the movie, it makes jobs.
One key element that’s missing, however, is a local doctor.
When Paul Lewis (Taylor Kitsch), a city slicker plastic surgeon, lands in the harbour for a month-long residency, the entire place (population: 121) bands together to convince him to stay — by any means necessary.
“I really wanted to be at the premier in St. John’s,” said Gleeson, who is best known as Alastor ‘Mad-Eye’ Moody in the Harry Potter series, “because to me, if the movie worked there, I could let it go.
“That’s all I cared about, really. It needed to have the imprimatur of the Newfoundlanders on it for me. Their reaction was quiet until they felt the reassurance that it was OK, that they could trust it a little bit more.”
The production spent seven weeks shooting on The Rock.
“The land and the sea in Newfoundland has a way of worming itself into your heart where you don’t feel quite complete without it,” said Gleeson.
Co-star Kitsch concurs. “It’s a very simple (way of life),” he says, “and obviously the pace is a lot slower, but once you get into that, you don’t want to leave it.
“They are very in the moment when you’re talking to them.
“You feel like they are incredibly genuine and grounded and there’s no ulterior motive,” he said. “Maybe I’m a bit jaded because of the business, but it is refreshing. It is kind of what it means to be a Canadian.”
Kitsch spent his off hours training for Lone Survivor, a Mark Wahlberg war film he shot immediately after wrapping on The Grand Seduction but he took some time to enjoy a great Newfoundland pastime — fishing.
“My best friend is an avid fisherman,” he says, “so he’d be figuring out what was going on with the moon and what the best tide is and when we should go and would get genuinely upset if we weren’t there at exactly 6:12 a.m. dropping lures into the water.”
The Kelowna, B.C.-born Kitsch is an in-demand actor these days and can currently be seen in the HBO movie The Normal Heart, but says he’d love to do more work in Canada. “I absolutely loved being in Canada,” he says, “working on home soil with a bunch of Canadians. “If the opportunity presents itself and it’s right, I’m in.”
The synopsis of “The Guard” reads like a standard police procedural. Renegade cop finds dead body, the FBI gets involved. Throw in some deadly drug smugglers and you have a Steven Seagal movie. Except this time you don’t. This time you have one of the most unexpectedly delightful movies of the year.
Brendan Gleeson (probably best known as Alastor “Mad-Eye” Moody in the Harry Potter series) is Sergeant Gerry Boyle, a small town West Ireland cop. He’s the opposite of a by-the-book policeman. In fact he’s more interested in escorts, pilfering LSD from traffic victims and drinking beer at the local pub than he is in the drug ring that has landed in his village. Or at least that’s how it seems to FBI agent Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle) who comes to town to bring down the drug cartel.
Despite having all the earmarks of a cop fish-out-of-water picture “The Guard,” by virtue of its setting and Gleeson’s central performance, is anything but. The bucolic Irish countryside location gives the movie a chance to establish a fresh setting, unfamiliar to most viewers, far from the city streets where most cop dramas are placed.
Then there is Gleeson, the real reason to see the movie. He’s an Irish Columbo, under estimated by everyone around him until the chips are down. It’s a complex performance, amusing on the surface, but rich with pathos as Boyle’s life is slowly revealed. He’s brilliant but unhappy, a man mired in existentialist muck as only someone who has read all the Russian classics can be. (Did I mention he and his cancer ridden mom, played by the amazing Fionnula Flanagan, quote the Russian masters?)
“The Guard” is 100% Gleeson’s movie. The open-ended story leaves room for the possibility of a sequel, and for once I hope they continue the story. Boyle is a character I’d like to see more of.
