Affleck's last Lehane adaptation was 2007's Gone Baby Gone, a much tighter Boston crime thriller than the almost-but-not-quite-ever-getting-there epic that Live By Night turns out to be.
We begin the story in prohibition-era Boston, where handsome, smart but jaded war vet-turned-outlaw Joe Coughlin (Affleck) is living his best life in the arms of bombshell blonde, street smart Emma Gould (Sienna Miller), much to the annoyance of his police inspector father (Brendan Gleeson) and her boyfriend, the bootlegging mob boss Albert White (Robert Glenister).
When Coughlin has the rug pulled out from under him by the vengeful White he swops over to work for the Italian mob in the hope of exacting his revenge.
He's sent to the sweaty, multicultural swamps of Tampa, Florida, where he's soon outsmarting the competition and swooning in the arms of the sultry Cuban rum runner Graciela (Zoe Saldana), much to the ire of the local branch of the Klu Klux Klan.
All of this sets the scene for Affleck to lounge about in a series of elegant linen suits, staring intently in an approximation of a man who knows he's better looking and smarter than everyone else in the room.
While the story certainly has all the elements of a potentially engaging epic gangster saga, Affleck's screenplay can't quite decide whose story to tell and how to mix the right proportions of ingredients to create the kind of lush, baroque film filled with intense, edgy psychopaths that it could have been in the hands of a director like Brian de Palma or Martin Scorsese.
WATCH the trailer 'Live By Night'
At just over two hours everything becomes quickly repetitive, predictable and obvious, and that's in spite of the often very pretty pictures created by cinematographer Robert Richardson and production designer Jess Gonchor.
The main problem is Affleck's own performance, which reduces the complexities of Coughlin to a series of grimaces and smirks that don't engender sympathy from anyone in the film or in the cinema.
The supporting actors are also predominantly average and unmemorable, making everyone blend into the shadows cast by the light of the glitzy costumes and locations.
Affleck has shown his talents as a director and while it would be wrong to deny him the opportunity to expand his ambitions, he's no Sergio Leone and Live By Night is definitely no Once Upon A Time in America.
Instead it's a mistimed footnote that adds nothing to the genre it wants to pay tribute to, and while you may not turn it off when it arrives on DStv, there's no reason to spend money on it now.
• This article was originally published in The Times.
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