[CRITICAL] GOOD TIME

Robert Pattinson walks the streets of new york at night in GOOD TIME, a thriller desperate run by the brothers Safdie.

Film without pretensions but with style, this is the magic formula found by the two directors of GOOD TIME. The story ? Two brothers organize a bank robbery. The employee is particularly cooperative, not worth it to get out of arms or shout. Everything is going well. A little too well. In their flight, anti-theft system of neutralization of banknotes triggers (the famous painting red recently honored in the missed Triple 9). The result of this incident, the brother are separated. From there begins a crazy cavalcade to meet without getting caught by the police. On this assumption of pure film genres, the Safdie deliver a movie moment completely efficient, no-frills, which is able to build an identity of formal motifs and themes already ressassés ad nauseum by the 7th itemUsed to shoot the losers, Joshua and Ben Safdie offer a story between two brothers accents, gray-ien. More than a story of brotherhood (it would be a fairly simplistic summary of James Gray movie families), especially, there is this desperate flight to thwart his destiny – the characters in Gray do only this. The opening of the film takes us not immediately in the action, she takes the time in a scene to set up the characters and their relationship : a is disabled and the passive, the other is nervous and streetwise. But they have this sacred bond between them, this bond of blood, which obliges them to have a form of union. This introduction is strong because it defines everything clearly in no time (the ratio of protected/protector, with its ambiguities on the side of Robert Pattinson) in a real preoccupation of effectiveness narrative, and it allows the continuation of the film to boost its drama by the initial characterization.

A look away, a GOOD TIME is to stow away in the box “series B”. Once running, the result is more interesting than that. Sort of a cross between the Michael Mann of the 80’s and Nicolas Winding Refn, the film is animated by an emergency taking everything in its path. The Safdie’s film of nearly the faces of their characters, the camera is also embedded in this downward spiral without end. You suffocate because we never see the conclusion coming on the horizon. Has every possible resolution, an additional step is added, delaying maturity. Incredibly well paced, the script refuses the dead time, increases the nervousness and condenses a maximum of actions in a short – time the events took place in less than 24 hours, the film lasts approximately 1 hour 35 minutes. Why take his time so that the characters do not ? They are primarily defined by the action, there is no need to be bored to a greater depth by digressions superficial adding of trauma or on-only-knows-what doubtful. The draft says finally, and built wonderfully. Where the marvel idea to go away Nick (Ben Safdie) of almost everything in the movie, joining this impression of absence scope by its first appearance. It motorized the issues but is not physically there.Led by a Robert Pattinson amazing accumulating choice of roles all make more sense than others, GOOD TIME becomes a film mind-blowing and hallucinatory as he moves forward. Lit with neon lights or in the light of a funfair (great scene in the ghost train), the story is unreal and becomes unpredictable. This gives the impression of living a long, leisurely night nightmare from which one cannot extricate himself. And when the day comes up, this is not to end it. While the camera remained close to the characters, she takes the time to be away considerably at the conclusion, highlighting a little more of the character ridiculous this leak doomed to failure. Filming with values of more broad, Safdie placed the characters in their way and deal with their dramatic fate, reducing them to small body in a huge space, manipulated by divine forces. So they loop the loop opened by the air initial plan : a wide shot of the city leading to a building where the handicapped brother meets a psychiatrist – it is from this prison that Connie (Robert Pattinson) wants to extract it. A first plane that could also be the final, because the path will have definitely been for nothing. As if it had never taken place.

Review published on the 25th may 2017 at the screening at the Cannes film Festival.

Maxime Bedini