![]() ![]() Joe is intelligent, intimidating, and politically adept enough to eventually leave his hometown and rise to the top of the Tampa crime scene, playing the Italian and Irish mobs off of each other. In Live by Night, Affleck plays Joe Coughlin, a petty criminal in Prohibition-era Boston who robs card games and speakeasies with fellow hoods and hangers-on. ![]() Why can’t Affleck direct himself to a good performance? In his two previous films, The Town and Argo, he played characters burdened with uninteresting arcs but who orchestrated the action around them-it’s almost as if Affleck can only imagine himself as a director within his own movies. Live by Night, Affleck’s follow-up to his Oscar-winning smash Argo is a fascinating mess of a movie, but it’s undone in part by the charisma vacuum at its center. Sadly, that actor is also Ben Affleck, and his appearances in these films show no sign of abating. He keeps casting this stiff, uncomfortable-looking actor in his lead roles, a man who too often seems distracted and unhappy, lacking the movie-star charisma he’s shown in other projects. ![]() ![]() As a filmmaker, he long ago proved himself an interesting, versatile voice in Hollywood, an heir to the gritty crime-thriller directors of the ’70s who excelled at staging small-scale action and getting big, pulpy performances from well-selected ensembles. ![]()
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