Good Time – first look review

This kinet­ic trawl through the neon gut­ters of Queens, New York, sees Robert Pat­tin­son con­tin­ue his post-Twi­light reha­bil­i­ta­tion as Con­nie, a want­ed hood who refus­es to throw in the blood-flecked tow­el. In some of the cre­do-sal­vaging films in which he appeared direct­ly after his stint as everyone’s favourite bray­ing goth vam­pire, it some­times felt that he was a lit­tle out of his depth. He want­ed so bad­ly to show his range that all you could see was the act­ing. But the tip­ping point arrived in James Gray’s The Lost City of Z, in which he insou­ciant­ly stole the film from under­neath bulky lead Char­lie Hun­nam with a breath­tak­ing and unshowy sup­port­ing turn.

Good Time marks the full tran­si­tion, as if his act­ing dirty laun­dry is now com­plete­ly ice white once more and he can make great movies with­out the bur­den of his for­ma­tive CV. He’s noth­ing short of tremen­dous here, tak­ing cues from Robert De Niro cir­ca Mean Streets as he chan­nels a sense of con­stant exas­per­a­tion, but in the most tamped down and poised way imag­in­able. He doesn’t ever strain to stretch this char­ac­ter too far or give him too much mys­tery or depth, empha­sis­ing that when it comes to his sin­gle-mind­ed moti­va­tions, he’s some­thing of a twin­kle-toothed open book.

Con­nie decides to bring his men­tal­ly dis­abled broth­er, Nick (Ben Safdie), into a caper so they can escape from New York and their pes­ter­ing grand­moth­er. They rob a bank but every­thing quick­ly goes south. Nick pan­ics and is appre­hend­ed by the cops and lat­er beat­en up in prison. Con­nie, per­haps real­is­ing that he’s plum out of ratio­nal life choic­es, decides to ded­i­cate his all to bust­ing his bro out of hos­pi­tal and then… who knows? There is no mas­ter plan here, and the Safdies’ film (like their bril­liant pre­vi­ous, Heav­en Knows What, about NY drug addicts), is about peo­ple forced to make snap life-or-death deci­sions at reg­u­lar inter­vals dur­ing the day.

Much of the film is shot in extreme close-up by direc­tor of pho­tog­ra­phy Sean Price Williams. It’s an inter­est­ing motif which stress­es the idea that Con­nie is suf­fo­cat­ing from human con­tact that he real­ly has no time for. He’s out for num­ber one and is a handy manip­u­la­tor when it comes to spin­ning fake sob sto­ries and con­vinc­ing oth­ers to just give a broth­er an even break. Yet when those who have helped him get burned in his jet trails, he can do noth­ing more than a send them a mild­ly pained glance which says, you’re inno­cent so the sys­tem will do right by you. Me? I’m going to hell.

The mate­r­i­al, of a man will­ing to throw any­one or any­thing under the train to ensure his free­dom, at times feels a lit­tle famil­iar. And it’s not too tough to guess where all this may­hem is head­ed giv­en Connie’s ever-more fan­ci­ful schemes and wild dis­re­gard for the law. It’s about des­per­a­tion, striv­ing to get by and maybe even a sign of how, in Amer­i­ca, vio­lence seems like the safe option for those look­ing for a quick life change. The icing on the cake is the puls­ing ambi­ent score by Oneo­htrix Point Nev­er. Good time indeed.