Ok, to be perfectly honest, after watching Uncut Gems I had to watch Good Time. Seriously. The filmmaking of Uncut Gems made me want to watch Good Time. Like a lot of people, I saw Robert Pattison in the Twilight movie franchise and thought he was good in it, but I hadn’t seen his other films like Cosmopolis, The Lighthouse or Good Time. I finally watched it and honestly it was amazing.
The movie is about a guy named Connie (played by Robert Pattinson) whose brother, Nick (Benny Safdie), ends up at Rikers Island after the two guys attempt to rob a bank, only to have their plans to rob the bank backfire and Nick ends up going to jail (my one thought though was why the choice of bank robbery masks? It kind of looked like they were wearing blackface, but maybe I’m being paranoid, I don’t know.) Connie needs bail money to get Nick out Connie does what he can to get his brother out of jail, and when he finds the guy he thinks is Nick at the hospital and wheels him out, he stays with a Black woman named Annie and her granddaughter, Crystal (Taliah Webster). Connie involves the daughter in his plan to get Nick away from the hospital, but what ends up happening is that Connie finds out that the guy he thought was Nick isn’t really Nick but some other guy named Ray (Buddy Duress) who, like Nick, looked beaten up badly. Connie thinks of leaving the guy but can’t because the guy opens up to him this story about this bottle of LSD he bought from his friends that’s worth more than a pretty penny, and how it got left in an amusement park and the guy never retrieved it because he took a cab and then told the cab driver what happened and then the cab driver wanted to take him to jail and so the guy jumped out of the cab and injured his face badly while doing so. In the end, the guy jumps out the window in a suicide attempt and Connie ends up going to jail. The movie ends with Nick in a facility where they have a mental health group therapy session for everyone, and in the session they play a game where they have to step across to the other side of the room if some event happened to them. The end credits roll as Nick ponders as to why this game is even relevant and why he even has to play it.
Honestly, while watching this film, I had the same bodily reaction that I did while watching Uncut Gems. It was so packed with action, and the movie pretty much just jumps into the plot without stopping or building up suspense. The music by Daniel Lopatin is the same kind of music that Uncut Gems had, and it gave the scenes their intensity.
9/18/21: So it’s September 18, and it’s been a couple weeks since I started writing this review. I was really chanting and pondering about what kind of review I wanted to write about the film, and I was also wrestling with why Connie did the things that he did. And so I chanted and reflected this morning, and I think seeing the film from a Buddhist perspective helped me process it a little better. In Buddhism, there’s this concept called The Ten Worlds, which are ten states of life that any one of us can experience at any given moment. The first four of these ten life states are hell, hunger, animality and anger. I think Connie did the things he did because he was constantly in the life state of animality. I read this really helpful book called An Introduction to Buddhism that the Soka Gakkai International (SGI) published, and it talks about each of the ten worlds. According to the book, “when in the state of animality, one acts based on instinct or impulse, unable to distinguish between right and wrong, good and evil…In the world of animality, people lack reason and conscience, seeing life as a struggle for survival in which they are willing to harm others to protect themselves. Unable to look beyond the immediate, they cannot plan for the future. Such a state of ignorance ultimately leads to suffering and self-destruction.” (An Introduction to Buddhism, p. 19) As I write this, it makes sense why the film moved so quickly the more I reflect on this probable reason for why Connie did the things he did. All Connie wanted to do was get his brother out of Rikers and get him home, but he didn’t really have a way out because the police are still tracking him down and the news keeps reporting about the failed bank robbery he and Nick set up. When he’s on the couch with Crystal and they’re watching television, the news suddenly comes on and his mugshot appears. Crystal looks at him and is trying to figure out if he’s that same guy that robbed the bank, but then Connie panics when he realizes she might turn him in to the cops, and so he forcefully kisses her. It’s hard to tell whether or not this kiss was consensual, but it showed me just one example of how Connie is in the world of animality. Because all he can think about is getting away from the cops, he’s willing to take advantage of Crystal to make his plot work. Even when Connie realizes that the guy he thought was Nick is actually somebody else, he still has Crystal drive him and the guy to White Castle to get them food with the little money that he has left. When Connie and the guy go to the amusement park to retrive the bottle of acid, a Black security guard stops them and Connie beats him up and steals his uniform while Ray pours the LSD down the guard’s throat. Connie by this point is not thinking about Crystal and when she gets arrested even though she’s obviously not the one who robbed a bank or beat up a security guard and poured acid down his throat, all he can do is just look silently as she is taken away. I was wondering why, while watching this film, it just seemed Connie was just going and going and couldn’t stop for anything, and I read the Wikipedia plot summary of the film after watching it and reading it gave me more insight into why the film moved so quickly. I know you’re thinking, Well, duh, silly, it’s a crime thriller, of course it’s gonna be fast-paced. But I think on a deeper level, seeing this movie from the perspective of the 10 Worlds concept helped me understand what might have psychologically or emotionally driven Robert Pattinson’s character to commit the actions he did. I mean, I can definitely see why the film got critical acclaim though, because Robert’s performance was really good.
I’m definitely still reflecting on the movie, and I’d probably have to watch it a second time just to maybe dive a little deeper into the film (and also, because the music was excellent.) I wasn’t even really thinking about what grade to give the film, I was just enthralled with the acting and the visual effects because the acting and visual effects of the Safdie brothers’ last film, Uncut Gems was excellent. My feeling about the movie at this point is pretty neutral; I just was more enthralled by the acting than anything else. Uncut Gems was really good, and I think after watching a lot of A24 films (Good Time is an A24 film) I think I just love the acting in them.
Good Time. 2017. Rated R for language throughout, drug use, sexual content and violence.
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