Good Time

You’ll have a hell of a ‘good time’ at the cinema watching this wild hypnotic adrenaline induced crime drama that bleeds off the screen with manic electric energy. The title is ironic as the characters are having anything but a good time in this film by the Safdie Brothers, Josh and Benny, a fresh and startling new voice in today’s cinema.

In competition at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival, Good Time won praise and a standing ovation from many critics for its performances, stylish look, hyper relentless pace, and disturbing but humanizing ambivalent depiction of Queens, New York’s urban underground. 

In the course of a single night, anything that can go wrong, does, and just keeps getting worse for Constantine (Connie) Nikas, played by an unrecognizable Robert Pattinson, a fast talking reckless hoodlum and con artist who leaves a path of destruction in his wake both physical and psychological. He takes advantage of everyone and every situation he comes in contact with, using them to his own single minded purpose. Even his mentally disabled younger brother Nick, (Benny Safdie) a child in a man’s body, is not exempt from Connie’s intense drive to get what he needs to survive.

After Connie coerces his brother Nick to help him pull off a daring bank robbery, things suddenly explode in his face when Nick is captured during a botched getaway and sent to prison. Connie knows that Nick will not survive long in jail without his help, so he desperately tries to raise the bail money he needs to get him out quickly.

Connie is not particularly likeable but he is extremely watchable. What keeps us hooked into the story is the way the Safdie brothers cleverly draw us in with Connie’s innocent sympathetic abused brother Nick who we see at the beginning of the film undergoing a psych evaluation by a community psychologist before Connie bursts in to take him away. It’s for his sake that we want to root for Connie, but only in a way that we might do seeing a panhandler with a loyal dog at his side. We may not want to give money to the beggar but we might for the sake of the dog.

In this dark Scorsesian thriller, there is something seamy about the people and places in the film, and the stylish visual design is intended to further enhance the feeling of depraved dread with a raw, smudged and over saturated color palette. The handheld camera angles are kept tight to Connie’s determined face as he manipulates the various characters he runs into. In this respect the film has a very European cinema verity feel and visual style.

Daniel Lopatin’s otherworldly retro electronic echo acid soundtrack is a throwback to 1970s and 80s musical scores of Tangerine Dream in suspense thrillers like William Friedkin’s Sorcerer (1977) and Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1981). Good Time is tragic and darkly comic but also mesmerizing as we follow Connie through nocturnal cityscapes from one absurdity to another, staring in disbelief at the crazy decisions he makes. The pulse-pounding score steadily increases the pace, blurring the neon house-of-horrors milieu, and allowing us to keep up with the action. 

I went into the film knowing nothing about it and came out pleasantly surprised at its edgy dark desperate vision and unique exciting perspective reminiscent of Scorsese’s early work, which may not be for everyone. Robert Pattinson’s stand out performance in particular is all-out stunning and more than carries the film with his frantic energy. 

Like a nightmare you can’t escape, Good Time gets under your skin and crawls into your psyche, wreaking havoc wherever it goes. This movie goes and goes without stopping until it just falls off the screen, leaving you wondering, like a bad dream, what did I just experience?

JP