Good Time (

2017

) ½

There is a tendency to lionize and romanticize criminals, particularly true in the West but if the scores of Triad and Yakuza movies indicate not unique to any culture or nation. Nor is this a new trope, as the old legends of Robin Hood or the highwaymen would indicate. There’s just something fascinating, at least for law-abiding citizens, about a figure who chucks out all of society’s rules and regulations and lives by their own code. Who among us hasn’t fantasied about what it would be like to not have to pay taxes or drive the speed limit? We see in the outlaw a figure of courage and daring, someone willing to reach for the things the rest of us merely daydream about. What else could be behind the legions of impossibly suave, impossibly brilliant criminals that dot our cinematic landscape from Ocean’s 11 (1960) to Le Samourai (1967) to Pulp Fiction (1994)?

It’s all crap, of course. Anyone who has spent even a moderate amount of time with real-life criminals knows that they are more pathetic than romantic. Most criminals are poor benighted types with no other real options open to them. Most common they are the children of the economic underclass, born into poverty and destined to endure the tribulations that entail. Make no mistake, poverty is no badge of honor as the trust-fund socialist set would have you believe; it’s a brutal and grinding life that erodes a man’s spirit and closes off paths until the future is a grim certainty. Sure, some can escape its horrors, but we should not be too quick to judge those they leave behind. Others are trapped into a life of crime by mental illness or addiction (most often two-sides of the same coin). Few if any choose to become criminals, and none are making a conscious decision to rebel against the hypocrisies of modern life. Consequently, these real-life criminals bear almost no resemblance to the figures we see projected on the movie’s screen. Fantasy and tropes are fine and dandy, though at times I find myself longing for a film that shows criminals in a more realistic light. It’s no use looking to the heroic police movies, as they tend to go to the opposite extreme, making criminals into grotesque monsters. Cobra (1986) may be fun as hell, but the Night Slasher is only a slightly more realistic villain than Sauron or Voldermort. Thus, to this day, I haven’t seen a better cinematic portrayal of a realistic criminal than Connie Nikas, the subject (as opposed to the protagonist) of today’s film.

What makes Connie different than Danny Ocean or Johnny Hooker is the means by which he commits his crimes. Rather than exploiting the stupidity of his marks, Connie instead takes advantage of their goodness, their willingness to take him at his word, and their eagerness to help someone out of a bind. When Connie is on the run from the cops, with a man who he believes to be his unconscious and heavily bandaged brother, he spins an elaborate tale that convinces an older woman to let him stay the night. The woman has no reason to believe him, yet she doesn’t for a moment think she might be aiding a criminal, instead, she regards her actions as just being a Good Samaritan. It’s that instinct, common to all decent people, that Connie exploits. Naturally, Connie does not limit himself to relying on the kindness of strangers. He also regularly extorts money from his much older girlfriend Corey, under the guise of helping his brother. Though indeed, the worst manipulation Connie perpetrates is against that same brother, Nick.

When the movie starts, Connie bursts into a therapy session where Nick is being treated, threatens the shrink and pulls his brother out to help him rob a bank. This would be bad enough under any circumstances, but since Nick is mentally handicapped, he lacks the wherewithal to tell Connie to take a hike with his idiotic robbery plan. Indeed, I can see no reason why Connie bothered to include Nick in the heist at all, as the presence of a barely competent backup is more of a hindrance than anything else. Indeed, in short order the heist has gone horribly awry, the money ruined by a dye pack and the two brothers fleeing through the streets just one step ahead of the cops. Some quick thinking on Connie’s part gets the duo cleaned up and disguises, but Nick has neither the experience nor the capacity to act as a hardened criminal, and as soon as a cop asks the pair what they are doing, Nick starts running. Connie is able to slip the dragnet, his brother is not so lucky.

Connie is not without human tendencies. He loves his brother in his own warped way and feels the natural twinge of guilt anyone would feel when they are directly responsible for a loved one's incarceration. Of course, he’ll never admit it, either to himself or to any of the other characters. Indeed, when he goes to his girlfriend/sugar momma/con victim, an older woman named Corey, he tells her that his brother was wrongfully incarcerated and that it's up to him to raise bail money. Corey’s own tragedy is so quietly in the background that it might slip right pass the viewer. She’s a middle-aged woman, who lives with her elderly mother and is dating a young man who plainly misuses and exploits her. What’s more, despite the fact that Corey lives in a swanky apartment and has plenty of money to throw around on frivolous trips, she is completely financially dependent on her mother. As evidenced by the fact that after running off with Connie, she cannot even raise enough money to call a cab, let alone make Nick’s bail. It turns out her mother has canceled her credit cards, an action more commonly taken with a spoiled teenage brat than a middle-aged woman. This is not much of a surprise, as Corey has more in common mentally with a teenage girl than a grown woman, suggesting some kind of delayed development or mental illness. Connie’s misuse of her is thus nearly as repellent as his treatment of his brother.

It’s only going to get worse from here. Connie breaks into the hospital and covertly busts a guy he thinks is his brother out (thinks being the keyword here, the man’s face is so heavily bandaged that it’s impossible to identify him). Connie bluffs his way past the hospital staff, police, and finally the aforementioned kindly black grandmother. He ends up in the black grandma’s house having spun an impossibly elaborate (and highly implausible story) that plays on the woman’s pity and kindness. For good measure, he seduces her 16-year-old granddaughter, Crystal, once the old lady has gone to bed. Though to be fair his motivations are pragmatic, not lecherous, he just didn’t want the girl to see his face on a new bulletin about his botched robbery. I’m not sure this does Connie any favors, being willing to go so far as to commit statutory rape to keep his cover suggests a calculating, nearly inhumanly so, madness. Were he motivated by lust for the girl, his actions would at least have the advantage of being comprehensible to the audience. Fortunately, the encounter is cut short when Nick wakes up and turns out to be a hitherto unknown criminal by the name of Ray.

Ray isn’t exactly upset about the situation, though he is understandably baffled about how he wound up not only outside of the hospital but out of police custody to boot. Seeing as he was only just released from prison the day before, he’s happy to have his freedom restored. The only problem is when he was fleeing from the cops he stashed a valuable item in the haunted house ride of a nearby amusement park: A sprite bottle full of LSD. For those unfamiliar with the price of drugs, LSD is 1000x more expensive than cocaine by weight. The amount in the bottle is probably worth millions. Ray says that his friends are gonna want the LSD back, and they’ll be in a position to reward Connie for any help he can offer in recovering it. Certainly, the drugs will fetch more than enough to post Nick’s bail. At first, it looks like the only tricky part is getting Crystal to give the pair a ride to the amusement park, but of course, things quickly spiral out of control.

Watching Good Time is a thoroughly discomforting experience. Part of it is just the atmosphere of unrelenting suspense and horror, more acutely disturbing than any recent horror film I can name. Connie lives life on the edge, a place that far from the mild existence I’m familiar with, and I’m not exactly thrilled to accompany him on a journey through his world for an hour and forty minutes. But more than the tension of the scenes (and the music and performances that heightens) it’s the depiction of human evil that really gets to me. Connie is as loathsome a character as care to name, made all the more repellent by his familiarity. Other terrifying cinematic criminals have at least had the virtue of being exotic, mercifully I have never met a man like Frank Zito from Maniac (1980) or the titular Henry from Henry: A Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986). I can’t say the same of Connie who instantly recalls all the worse traits and tendencies of any number of acquaintances. Robert Patterson, of Twilight (2008) fame, should be commended for his performance. He makes Connie a compelling figure without compromising the inherent repulsiveness of the character.

Most reviewers seem hard-pressed to make this movie into some sort of commentary about race. Their argument hinges on Connie wearing a blackface mask while he robs the bank and the way he effortlessly impersonates the guard at the amusement park. ‘The racist cops assume the black security guard is the intruder instead of the very real white criminal’ is the gist of the argument, though it seems a trifle absurd. Connie is the guy wearing the guard’s uniform, and the guard having been concussed and force-fed LSD is totally incomprehensible. Were the races reversed the cops probably act exactly the same way, as they have no reason to believe otherwise. As for the blackface mask, this was apparently based on a real-life incident. Connie uses it because disguising himself as a black man is a good way to throw off the cops, who will not be looking for a suspect of his pallor. Perhaps you could see this as a quite statement on race, but it is nowhere near the central tenant that many reviewers make it out to be. Indeed, it’s just another detail about Connie’s character, another thing that paints him as loathsome and cunning. He’s someone who exploits other people’s expectations and reactions with a cruel indifference about who gets hurt by it. The hyper-focus on what is a relatively minor aspect of the film is indicative of a larger failure in modern criticism. Unfortunately, most of those reviewing movies today do not have the ability to review a film based on its aesthetic qualities. They know the film is great because a great film is self-evident, but they have no idea why it is great. They can only appraise it in a moral light and consequently can only evaluate the movie on whether it adheres to their belief system. It's a pitiful state of affairs that only-seems to be getting worse