Good Time Review
Chaos, flashing lights, and the beating heart of the New York underworld are personified in this 100-minute film co-directed by Josh and Benny Safdie, with the help of their cinematographer Sean Price Williams. It tells the story of a botched bank robbery committed by Connie Nikas with the help of his mentally handicapped brother Nicholas. This film guarantees two things; not only will your heart be beating but, if you pay attention, your mind will be racing as well. The Safdie brothers created this very digestible movie that comments on a multitude of societal issues, specifically revolving around the American justice system and white privilege. Through all the chaos and the neon themes, electronic score, and shaky camera work, there is a deeper story, one that provokes a multitude of questions.
The movie opens in a calm manner with Nicholas talking to a psychiatrist of some sort before Connie busts in and removes him from his appointment. Immediately upon meeting him, you’re thrust into chaos, indicative of the kind of person that Connie is. Wherever he goes, chaos follows, and this remains true from the moment of his entrance. The scene continues and shows us the toxic relationship between the two siblings; Connie with a toxic love and dependence on his brother who doesn’t know any better.
Race plays a huge roll in this movie, beginning the moment of the bank robbery when Connie puts them in blackface to commit the crime and then chooses a black bank teller. Connie very knowingly uses his white privilege to serve his interests. After the robbery, Nick’s arrest, and Connie breaks him out of the hospital, he hides out in a mostly black neighborhood in the home of a black woman and her granddaughter. While watching an episode of Cops with her sixteen-year-old granddaughter, they see a suicidal woman fall victim to poor police work and Connie mutters “turn this off, I don’t wanna see them try to justify this shit…” This reveals his knowledge of the failures of the justice system and how they impact the majority of humans, yet we still see him use these failures against black people multiple times. For instance, Dash, the security officer at the amusement park. Connie and Ray break in and when Dash finds them and reveals the cops are coming, they knock him out, drug him, Connie takes his uniform and tells the police that he found him in the ride like that. Dash ends up getting taken in and when Crystal, the aforementioned sixteen-year-old granddaughter who is unknowingly harboring a fugitive, gets out of the car to see what’s going on Connie allows her to get arrested as well. The most heartbreaking part of this sequence of events is watching the realization on Crystals face when she understands what is happening. Tallah Webster does a phenomenal job showing the tumbling emotions that are going through Crystal’s mind as she’s shoved into the back of a police car.
Ray’s story is another tool utilized to emphasize the failures of the justice system. He talks about getting out of jail and then dropped off in front of a liquor store with basically no money in his account. Recidivism rates are exceedingly high in America, caused by the lack of reintegration to society. They release these prisoners with no money, no support, and then drop them off in front of a god damn liquor store. Ray immediately begins drinking and going back to his ways, showing how easy it is for prisoners to return to prison because they’ve been left in the dust by the state. Ray’s tragic ending, falling to his death off the side of Dash’s apartment building, goes to show just how badly these prisoners can be affected by the neglect of the government.
Now, throughout this entire movie, we see Connie do the most horrific things all in the name of getting his brother back. He breaks Ray out of the hospital, causing his parole to be violated and leading to his eventual death. He takes advantage of Crystal and engages in sexual acts with her to hide the fact that he’s on the run and takes her with him to get his brother, leading to her eventual arrest. He tries to take $10,000 from his girlfriend’s mom to bail his brother out. He is self-centered and has no care for the people whose lives he is ruining. This comes to play in the final scene of Connie, after he is finally caught by the police, and he’s riding in the back of a cop car. Robert Pattinson stares past the camera with a faraway look in his eyes, swaying back and forth, and maybe begins to realize what he had done and feel bad about it. More likely, I think that he was realizing that none of his actions made him victorious, it was a project in futility. He is still separated from Nick, he doesn’t have any money, and now he’s going to be in prison. After all that, he didn’t even accomplish the thing he set out to do. Connie isn’t a violent person, he never wields a gun, but he is not a good person. He capitalizes off other people’s vulnerability and feels no remorse about doing so.
The heart jerker of the movie is the final scene of Nick. It mirrors the calmness of the beginning scene, only this time Connie doesn’t come in to take him out of the hospital. Without Connie there, Nick is with his grandma (who Connie hated) and he is going to the hospital to receive help from the psychiatrist. This drives the point that Connie was causing all this chaos, because the moment he is finally gone, the audience returns to the sereneness of the first scene, the first time our hearts have stopped pumping since Connie’s first appearance. The final scene is Nick, making new friends, being with his grandma, and coming to terms with his trauma. Benny Safdie, portraying Nick, does an amazing job of showing the wheels spinning in Nick’s head as he hears these prompts that cause him to realize what Connie had done to him and help him understand that he didn’t want to do those things and he’d ended up in the position that he was in because of Connie’s selfishness.
Overall, the Safdie brothers do a really great job making this movie an exciting watch while also losing none of the meaning or messages of the movie. The cinematography is beautiful, constantly being cascaded in this world of dark skies and bright lights, shaky camera work that helps emphasize the desperation of the situation Connie is in, and an electronic score that keeps your heart pumping. The cast is phenomenal and every scene felt intentional. I didn’t enjoy this movie nearly as much the first time I watched it, so it definitely requires a second watch in my opinion.
