Good Time (film)

Good Time (2017) directed by Benny Safdie, Josh Safdie â¢ Reviews ...

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Good Time is a 2017 American crime film directed by Josh and Benny Safdie and written by Josh Safdie and Ronald Bronstein. It stars Robert Pattinson as a bank robber on the run with his developmentally disabled brother (Benny Safdie); Barkhad Abdi and Jennifer Jason Leigh co-star. The original soundtrack was composed by electronic musician Oneohtrix Point Never.

The film received critical praise and was selected to compete for the Palme d'Or in the main competition section at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival.

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Plot

Connie Nikas forcibly removes his developmentally disabled brother Nick from a therapy session. The two rob a New York City bank for $65,000. In the getaway car, a dye pack explodes in a money bag, causing the driver to crash. Connie and Nick flee on foot, washing the dye from their clothes in a restaurant restroom. Stopped by police, Nick panics and runs; Nick is arrested while Connie escapes.

Connie attempts to secure a bail bond, but needs $10,000 more to get Nick out of jail. He convinces his girlfriend, Corey, to pay with her mother's credit cards, but her mother cancels the cards. Connie learns that Nick has been hospitalized after a fight with an inmate. Connie breaks him out of the hospital, unconscious and bandaged, and convinces a woman to let them stay in her house with her 16-year-old granddaughter Crystal. While they watch TV, the news shows photos of Connie's face; to distract Crystal, he kisses her. Hearing screams from the other room, Connie realizes the man he broke out of the hospital is not Nick but a man released on parole, Ray.

The three drive to the Adventureland amusement park, where Ray stowed a bottle of LSD solution worth several thousand dollars before he ran from police and injured himself. Searching for the bottle, Connie and Ray are discovered by Dash, a security guard; Connie beats him unconscious. As police arrive, Connie steals the man's uniform and Ray pours LSD down the man's throat to make him incoherent. Connie convinces the police that the guard was the intruder and destroys a hard drive containing security footage. Police arrest Crystal as she waits outside.

Ray and Connie break into the guard's high-rise apartment. Ray begins drinking and Connie tells him he is a leech on society. At Connie's insistence, Ray calls his criminal friend Caliph to buy back the LSD so they can get the bail money. When Caliph arrives, Connie demands $15,000; Caliph agrees, but gestures to Ray that he will retrieve a firearm. Connie flees with the drugs, but is caught by police. Ray attempts to escape from a window but falls to his death. Nick joins a therapy class and begins to participate in a group activity.

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Cast

Robert Pattinson as Constantine "Connie" Nikas, Nick's older brother and Corey's boyfriend
Ben Safdie as Nickolas "Nick" Nikas, Connie's younger, mentally-handicapped brother
Jennifer Jason Leigh as Corey, Connie's girlfriend
Barkhad Abdi as Dash, a Security Guard working a night shift at an amusement park
Buddy Duress as Ray, a criminal whom Connie mistakes for his brother
Taliah Webster as Crystal, a teenage girl who helps Connie
Necro as Caliph, a criminal friend of Ray
Peter Verby as Peter, Nick's psychiatrist

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Production

On July 9, 2015, it was announced that Ben and Josh Safdie would direct a caper film called Good Time, and that Pattinson was attached to star. Elara Pictures' Sebastian Bear-McClard and Oscar Boyson produced the film, which Pattinson has described as a "really hardcore kind of Queens, New York, mentally damaged psychopath, bank robbery movie."

Principle photography on the film began on January 3, 2016 in New York City.

Music

Oneohtrix Point Never provided the film's score, which won the Soundtrack Award at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival. His work for the film included a collaboration with singer Iggy Pop, "The Pure and the Damned." The score was released as Oneohtrix Point Never's eighth studio album in August 2017.

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Release

In October 2016, A24 acquired distribution rights to the film. It was selected to compete for the Palme d'Or in the main competition section at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival. It began a limited U.S. release on August 11, 2017, and expanded widely two weeks later.

Critical response

On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 92%, based on 204 reviews, with an average rating of 7.6/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "A visual treat filled out by consistently stellar work from Robert Pattinson, Good Time is a singularly distinctive crime drama offering far more than the usual genre thrills." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 80 out of 100, based on 41 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter gave the film a positive review, praising Pattinson's performance, and wrote: "Led by Robert Pattinson giving arguably his most commanding performance to date as a desperate bank robber cut from the same cloth as Al Pacino's Sonny Wortzik in Dog Day Afternoon, this is a richly textured genre piece that packs a visceral charge in its restless widescreen visuals and adrenalizing music, which recalls the great mood-shaping movie scores of Tangerine Dream."

Guy Lodge of Variety also gave the film a positive review, and said that "Robert Pattinson hits a career high in Benny and Josh Safdie's nervy, vivid heist thriller, which merges messy humanity with tight genre mechanics." The Economist praised Pattinson's performance, saying it "establishes him as a capable character actor". Emily Yoshida of Vulture said "For all its throttling thrills, Good Time is a film about a destructive love -- and loving someone despite not having the right kind of love to give them. Ignore the deceptively convivial title: This is the kind of thrill that sticks."

Conversely, Rex Reed of The Observer criticized the film, calling it "just under two hours of pointless toxicity," populated by brainless characters, filled with ludicrous writing, and laced with mostly over the top acting, "with characters so contrived that the movie defies even the most basic logic." "At best," Reed wrote, "it's a frenetic, disjointed and totally surreal look at people in crisis, seen through the eyes of other people in crisis. It all takes place in one night, but it seems to last days." Likewise, A.O. Scott of The New York Times said: "Sometimes it flaunts its clichés -- Nick's disability, and Benny Safdie's slack-jawed portrayal of it, is a big one -- and other times it cloaks them in rough visual textures and jumpy, bumpy camera movements, so that a rickety genre thrill ride feels like something daring and new. It isn't. It's stale, empty and cold."