The audience will resent racism, misogyny, or even the glorification of sociopathy, which can hardly be further from the truth and make the film timeless. Good Time, packed with its sarcastic and even cynical title, is an image of the Trump's America just as similarly intonated films of earlier decades hit Nixon or Reagan.
This picture is not at all beautiful, but it is necessary to think about it. Even Robert Pattinson, a once-dazzling teen-vampire of Twilight Saga, who for now has been quite successful in choosing artistic films with significant director's names, here, interestingly and almost completely successfully channels the young Al Pacino.
He is joined by other professionals and amateurs, and amateurs are one of Safdie's signature faces, and Good Time is their first film with professional actors. But the film has its own problems, above all with a pace.
In its content and style, Good Time doesn't seem to belong to this period of cinema. A story resembling a New York-based crime-anecdote about the night that is turning upside down and in which everything goes bad, black and humorous, as well as dark as the bottom of the well, associates with the late phase of New Hollywood and its immediate echo, towards the '70s and beginning ' 80s, like Scorsese's After Hours. Yet, Good Time is a real movie that comes at the right time and dissects contemporary American reality.
In one of the first scenes, rarely quiet for this film, the guy with intellectual difficulties Nick (one of the co-directors Benny Safdie) answers the questions of his court-appointed psychotherapist and is uncomfortable to him. We find out that he had violent outbursts against his grandmother with whom he lived and that his brother, a small criminal Connie (Pattinson) may have a bad influence on him. He will just stop the session with a lot of noise and anger, which will turn out to be the first of his catastrophically wrong decisions.
Connie has a plan for brothers to rob the bank and go away with the money, far, far away. However, as Connie is not as clever and resourceful as he thinks he is, amateur robbery goes to hell, and the brothers and most of the money are sprinkled with a marker-paint. In flight, the police catches Nick and takes him to the investigative prison where he is injured in a fight and transferred to the hospital. Connie wants to put bail, but he doesn't have enough money. There is nothing left for him then to flee out of the hospital.
Have I elaborated that Connie is constantly overestimating himself and that his every plan to pull out brings him into even greater trouble? His actions include an alliance with another criminal and addict (amateur Buddy Durres), a search for " lost treasure"or drug and money, a fun park, then a conflict with his guard (Abdi) and morally questionable things like the seduction of a minor (another great, unprofessional actress, Taliah Webster in his first film role). All in all, crazy, hellish night.
With the great acting of the entire ensemble, above all Robert Pattinson, who is present in every scene and carries the entire movie on his shoulders, which is greatly joined by others, professionals and amateurs, with that unmistakable smash of people who all over the place pushed the rock uphill, lying, screaming and cheating to keep their heads above the water, as well as in the spooky electronic music background of Daniel Lopatin.
The Good Time's primarily problem is pace. It's about the so-called sprinting logic that other authors are suffering from, and the real example is Danny Boyle. So, once the sprinter gets off the start block, and the movie gets to know us with the main characters, we get chasing and mania at an ever stronger and stronger pace. Now, the feature film is closer to a long line or even to a marathon than to a sprint, and when the tempo reaches its maximum, it follows a fall from which most films do not recover. It's not so catastrophic here, but it's felt, and after that it acts as a more or less successful "extraction" from a situation with an end, in principle cut off at that convenient place.
Good Time in a package with its sarcastic and even cynical title, is a picture of the Trump's America, just as similarly intonated films of earlier decades hit Nixon or Reagan. This picture is not at all beautiful, but it is necessary to think about it.
This was my translation from Croatian to Serbian from Lupiga article ''Paklena noć: film koji dolazi u pravo vreme i secira savremenu američku stvarnost''