Good Time

Good Time doesn’t waste any time getting started — although it begins quietly enough. Nick Nikas (Benny Safdie) is in a therapy session with a psychiatrist (Peter Verby). He has an intellectual disability, but the doctor’s series of questions have an unnecessarily patronizing tone. Just as the discussion gradually causes Nick to get agitated, his brother Connie Nikas (Robert Pattinson) bursts into the room and takes him away from the environment. Next thing you realize, the two boys are robbing a bank.

Good Time is a production that feels alive. It’s a dynamic experience of dialogue and mood. A dark electronic soundtrack is provided by Daniel Lopatin, better known as Oneohtrix Point Never. If you need a descriptive reference point, think Vangelis’ work on Blade Runner. Hand-held but steady camera work by Sean Price Williams reinforces an immediacy to the proceedings. I was so immediately immersed into the world of Good Time that the moment the opening credits finally began flashing across the screen, they felt like an interruption. I was fully engrossed in the crime thriller from the get-go.

Good Time is a powerfully constructed character study from brothers Josh and Benny Safdie. The latter of whom portrays the aforementioned Nick. The Safdie brothers are rising talents amid the indie film scene of New York. Despite their still relative anonymity in the mainstream, they have a slew of credits to their name. I was surprised to learn this is actually their fourth movie. Their output also includes numerous shorts as well as the documentary Lenny Cooke. Good Time is the follow-up to their 2014 drama Heaven Knows What. You are forgiven if you’ve never heard of it. That feature showed in a mere 14 theaters at its widest distribution.  Granted they aren’t household names like the Coen brothers yet, but given their flair for telling a captivating story, that distinction would seem like an eventual inevitability.

Robert Pattinson is perhaps forever linked to the Twilight series, but with Good Time, he does more to make you forget the role of Edward Cullen than he ever has before. He looks offbeat – gaunt with sunken eyes and pasty skin.  He sports ragged, greasy hair.  First it’s brown, then dyed blonde.   He acts different too. His rabid performance as Connie Nikas is an actor reborn as a personality motivated by an all consuming devotion to his brother. When their bank heist goes awry, Nick is arrested while he is not. Connie’s focus becomes raising bail for his sibling so he can get him out. What follows is the personal odyssey of an individual that encounters one setback after another. The narrative is driven forward by the sympathetic objective of a desperate criminal with cunning street smarts.

Robert Pattinson is mesmerizing as Connie. He propels the adventure, but his interactions with other people are key. Connie’s frenzied desire to free Nick from jail has a galvanizing effect. Connie is a user and his loyalty to brother Nick inspires his manipulation of other people. This brings us to the supporting cast, an ensemble almost as engrossing as the lead protagonist. There’s Jennifer Jason Leigh (The Hateful Eight) as his girlfriend, Barkhad Abdi (Captain Phillips) as a night shift Security Guard, Taliah Webster (in her film debut) as a helpful teenage girl, and Buddy Duress (the Safdie brothers’ own Heaven Knows What) as a fellow criminal who is inadvertently ensnared into Connie’s plight. All of these people become enmeshed in his turbulent web of emotional desperation. Connie Nikas may not be someone to admire, but he’s someone with which to be fascinated.

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