Movie · 2017 · Crime, Thriller, Drama · 1h 42m · R · English
Curator score: 8.4/10 (158.5K ratings)
Are you ready for a Good Time?
Overview
After a botched bank robbery lands his younger brother in prison, Connie Nikas embarks on a twisted odyssey through New York City's underworld to get his brother Nick out of jail.
Ratings
Curator score: 8.4/10
IMDb: 7.3/10
Rotten Tomatoes: 91%
Metacritic: 80
TMDB: 7.2/10
Director
Josh Safdie, Benny Safdie
Production
Elara Pictures, Rhea Films, Hercules Film Fund
Cast
Robert Pattinson, Benny Safdie, Buddy Duress, Taliah Webster, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Barkhad Abdi, Necro, Peter Verby, Saida Mansoor, Gladys Mathon, Rose Gregorio, Eric Paykert, Astrid Corrales, Rachel Black, Hirakish Ranasaki, Maynard Nicholl, Ben Edelman, Laurence Blum, Jason Harvey, Robert Clohessy
Curator Review
Verdict
A nerve-shredding crime thriller that turns a bad decision into a full-body panic attack. It’s stylish, propulsive, and deeply stressful, with a grimy New York atmosphere and a tragic, morally messy center.
Best for
Viewers who like high-tension crime stories
Fans of anxious, propulsive filmmaking
People drawn to morally compromised antiheroes
Audiences who appreciate gritty urban atmosphere
Viewers interested in intense performances and kinetic editing
Skip if
You want a calm or leisurely-paced film
You dislike relentless stress and humiliation
You need clearly likable protagonists
You prefer clean, tidy crime plots
You’re sensitive to exploitative or upsetting situations
Overview
Good Time is a pure adrenaline movie: a desperate sprint through New York’s underbelly where every choice makes things worse. The Safdies keep the camera close, the pace brutal, and the mood permanently on edge, so even small setbacks feel catastrophic. It’s the kind of film that turns bad luck into a suffocating system of consequences.
Worth noting
What makes it more than a panic machine is how it traps you inside Connie’s self-justifying chaos. The movie is thrilling, but it’s also uncomfortable in a way that lingers, because his love, selfishness, and manipulation are all tangled together. Robert Pattinson gives the film its jittery center, and the supporting turns make the whole thing feel lived-in and dangerous.
Bottom line
If you like crime films that are less about cleverness than momentum, damage, and survival, this is an easy recommendation. It’s harsh, stylish, and memorable, with a final stretch that lands like a punch to the chest.
Top Letterboxd reviews
James (Schaffrillas) (5★) · 11935 likes
Mf could have just changed the channel but instead he chose to go down as a pedophile
#1 gizmo fan (5★) · 10528 likes
Imagine your worst panic attack.
Times it by 100.
Peter Labuza (4★) · 8586 likes
A green Sprite bottle, given almost a mythical introduction in a frenetic monologue, slips out of the hand of a character and roles into a puddle of water. The camera, finally imparted from its intense close-ups to a God's eye long shot, lingers just for a second as it rolls into a puddle where it could be misconceived as trash. An object of everyday life that has been signified with narrative agency (A MacGuffin up there with the Arc of… more A green Sprite bottle, given almost a mythical introduction in a frenetic monologue, slips out of the hand of a character and roles into a puddle of water. The camera, finally imparted from its intense close-ups to a God's eye long shot, lingers just for a second as it rolls into a puddle where it could be misconceived as trash. An object of everyday life that has been signified with narrative agency (A MacGuffin up there with the Arc of… more
amaya (5★) · 6640 likes
when robert pattinson dyes his hair blond and runs around erratically he's a good actor but when i do it i'm "hysterical" and "scaring the children"
Neil Bahadur (4★) · 4697 likes
"I got beat up. I'm the victim here."--"Cross the room if you've ever been blamed for something you didn't do."
Many months before the films North American release, I joked that Good Time looked like "a modern-day Phil Karlson picture" so I was doubly pleasantly surprised when I found that this film approximated that feeling. In his annual love-letter to Cannes, Mark Peranson called the film "a kind of Dionysian New York Gesamtkunstwerk....immersion without identification." Where Good Time… more