“Don’t count your chickens before they hatch, do you know what that means?” A social worker in the Safdie Brothers’ “Good Time” asks that question to Nick (Benny Safdie), a dead-eyed man with a stony, gaping face and who is mentally challenged. The social worker asks a few more questions, and just as he’s making a breakthrough, with Nick even shedding a tear, his loving but unhinged brother Connie (Robert Pattinson) whisks him away.
Connie would’ve done well to hear that age-old proverb. That’s because “Good Time” is a carnival ride careening out of control, a neon-lit trip as one man’s desperate attempts to get his brother out of jail destroys the lives of everyone in his wake. It’s hypnotically chaotic and irresistibly surreal as though we’re seduced by the character’s tragic trial and error as things get worse and worse.
The film begins with Connie bringing Nick along to help rob a bank. They walk out of the bank with the cash and Connie gives Nick some positive reinforcement every step of the way. It’s a caring, but certainly unhealthy relationship. And naturally, their escape ends poorly, with a dye pack bursting over both of them and Nick stumbling through a glass door in their mad dash away from the cops. Connie now needs $10,000 to bail his brother out of prison before he gets hurt, and each step ropes a new, unwitting bystander into this fiasco.
From the get-go, “Good Time” has a kinetic sense of pacing, with the camera tracking every characters’ darting eyes, harried faces and calls coming in that amplify the tension. All the while, an anxiety-ridden experimental score by Oneohtrix Point Never drives home the constant paranoia. It relies on heart-racing club beats, pulsing melodies and wailing synths that match the film’s colorful and erratic tone.
And the Safdies engulf us in other-worldly lighting that signal that Connie’s journey is filled with distractions and complications. At one point he’s sweet-talked his way into the house of an old woman traveling back from a hospital. Every room of her home is cluttered and in squalor, but each room is bathed in a different colored hue, with Connie wandering through a nightmare of his own making. Later on, we even get a story within the story, and against all odds we’re caught up in the rambling, lucid acid trip of an ex-con on his first day out of prison. It’s a ride.
But on a more human level, “Good Time” is about how a man in need, even one of questionable morals, can appeal to someone’s good nature and earn their trust. Connie has incredible ingenuity, always lying two steps ahead and always with a story to tell. He explains to a 16-year-old girl who obliviously tags along with him that he’s certain he was a dog in a previous life. “That’s why they love me so much.” He’s offered so many seat-of-his-pants second chances and remarkable escapes, but “Good Time” acknowledges that even all that good will can only carry you so far.
The Safdies are exciting directors to watch, and Pattinson has never been more focused or natural in his performance. It’s his charisma in this ugly part that keeps us following him down the rabbit hole until the bitter end.
4 stars