Ben Affleck may have had more than his fair share of punches thrown at him by Hollywood neighsayers, but there is little doubting the man’s reputation when it comes to star quality.
The Oscar-winning director (Argo) and writer (Good Will Hunting), is back on screens again this week with the dramatic crime thriller Live by Night.
Set in Boston during the roaring 20s, prohibition had given rise to an endless network of underground distilleries, speakeasies, gangsters, and corrupt cops. Joe Coughlin (Affleck) the youngest son of a prominent Boston police captain, has long since turned his back on his strict and proper upbringing. Now having graduated from a childhood of petty theft to a career in the pay of the city’s most fearsome mobsters, Joe enjoys the spoils, thrills, and notoriety of being an outlaw.
But life on the dark side carries a heavy price. In a time when ruthless men of ambition, armed with cash, illegal booze, and guns, battle for control, no one-neither family nor friend, enemy nor lover-can be trusted. Joe embarks on a dizzying journey up the ladder of organized crime that takes him from the flash of Jazz Age Boston to the sensual shimmer of Tampa’s Latin Quarter to the sizzling streets of Cuba.
Live by Night is a riveting epic layered with a diverse cast of 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.
