There’s a lot of ambition going on in “Good Time,” a bizarre crime drama, directed by the Safdie brothers (Benny and Josh). It starts off provocative, middles nice, but finishes off confusing and murky. I wanted to like it, but the third act ruined it for me.
Robert Pattinson plays Connie, a young thief with a disabled brother Nick (Benny Safdie). They rob a bank, get away with the cash, and end up in turmoil when a dye-pack in the money blows up. The police chase them, and Nick ends up in jail.
Nick is determined to bail him out, and when he finds out he has been badly injured and placed in the hospital, he breaks him out. Unfortunately, he got the wrong guy: a guy released on parole named Ray (Buddy Duress). He managed to slip acid in a Sprite bottle, and the money was ditched at an amusement park. Nick decides to get that money, but once the robbery starts, everything goes all over the place. That’s bad for both him and me.
“Good Time” has great performances from Pattinson, Safdie, and Duress, and a nice direction done by the Safdie brothers; the premise starts off intriguing, but again, everything spirals out of control. The personas and character development are hard to follow, the third act left me in a tizzy, and the cameos from Jennifer Jason Leigh and Barkhad Abdi are underwritten.
This is an ambitious project, but I wanted more or less out of the movie.
⭐️⭐️1/2
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