Mr Affleck's performances lack depth - compare and contrast those of this amazing brother Casey. And there is a very large dose of it here. Mr Affleck's persona is always of a handsome man who knows he's handsome, and who is very pleased with himself about it. Or put it in its current form on Netflix as a two-part drama. The producer and/or the director needed to tell the writer to put it through another draft. I read that an entire strand of the book was removed for the purposes of the film, but this was not enough. But overall, there is a sense of the director being in thrall to the screenplay. Within scenes there's a reassuring sense of control of pace. As a director of actors Mr Affleck is strong: he elicits particularly striking work from Chris Messina, Elle Fanning, Remo Girone and Sienna Miller. There are excellent action sequences, such as an exciting car-chase and a final shoot-out. Also, it feels as though the adaptation from Dennis Lehane's novel has not sufficiently transformed what was on the page into cinematic story-telling. There's an expert team on both sides of the camera. Let's look at those contributions one by one. Live by Night is a riveting epic layered with loyal friends and callous enemies, tough rumrunners and sultry femmes fatales, Bible-quoting evangelists and cruel Klansmen, all battling for survival and their piece of the American dream.Producer, director, writer and lead actor: Ben Affleck. But until that day, he and his friends are determined to live life to the hilt.Joe's dizzying journey up the ladder of organized crime takes him from the flash of Jazz Age Boston to the sensual shimmer of Tampa's Latin Quarter to the sizzling streets of Cuba.

Beyond money and power, even the threat of prison, one fate seems most likely for men like Joe: an early death. But life on the dark side carries a heavy price.

Joe Coughlin, the youngest son of a prominent police captain, has graduated from a childhood of petty theft to a career in the pay of the city's most fearsome mobsters. Prohibition has given rise to an endless network of underground distilleries, speakeasies, gangsters, and corrupt cops. From Dennis Lehane, bestselling author of The Given Day, comes a spellbinding tour de force that brings to life a bygone era when vice was a national virtueBoston, 1926.

Live by night novel