By Emilio Frenk.
Directors: Benny Safdie and Josh Safdie
Cast: Robert Pattinson, Benny Safdie, Taliah Webster, Necro, Peter Verby, Saida Mansoor, Gladys Mathon, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Barkhad Abdi.
Rating: Excellent.
Benny and Josh Safdie, writer/directors of “Heaven Knows What” bring “Good Time” a both drama and thriller that delivers impressive results.
The movie focuses on brother Connie (Robert Pattinson) and Nick Nikas (Benny Safdie) who one day rob a bank in Queens, New York and goes wrong.
During that time Nick gets arrested and Connie tries to bail him out. The problem gets worse when the bail money for Nick is not enough and Connie finds out that his brother ended up hospitalized.
Now Connie is not only the run of the law but he needs to find a way to get his brother out of the hospital before everything gets worst.
“Good Time” is a movie that works in all levels, thanks to the screenplay that both the Safdie brothers wrote, followed by a brilliant direction that they both did.
The way how the characters were written and also how they portrayed New York as a character in the film was a very interesting approach for this film.
Not only the Safdie Brothers I considered them visually artists but knew how to get out the best of their cast, specially from Robert Pattinson, who has given the best performance of his career and it looks like the image that he had from the Twilight movies is fading away.
The score plays a key role in this film and is beautifully composed by Oneohtrix Point Never, who has also composed scores for movies like “The Bling Ring” and “Partisan” and did an amazing job.
I´m not a big fan of electronic music but here it was wisely used and the way how the score illustrated the main characters worked at all moments and the introduction of the characters is one of the best I´ve seen in film.
The conflicts of this two characters are constant and this is one of the things that made the movie interesting.
The character of Robert Pattinson, Connie is constantly getting himself in trouble and tries to always to find a solution but everyone gets hurt due to his temper and the way he handles things.
The only problem that I did have on the film was the ending. This could have had a better resolution but still the movie does work at all levels.
To be total honest I had no idea of what I was going to watch. The trailer was very well made when I watched it and I was attracted to that idea.
This is worth watching film, even though it can be a hard to watch.
“Good Time” is one the year´s best independent films and I highly recommend it.