A breathless night of criminal chaos drives the electric “Good Time”

Robert Pattinson isn’t the only captivating thing about Good Time, the new feature directed by brothers Benny and Josh Safdie (Daddy Longlegs, Heaven Knows What), but the actor is essential to the film’s nervous electric power. Had another performer portrayed the lead role of Constantine “Connie” Nikas, a small-time New York criminal, Good Time would still be a dizzyingly stylish work of filmmaking, a kind of realist noir about one frantic night on the lowest rungs of the underworld. Pattinson’s scuzzy, live-wire charisma in the role, however, is a key factor in keeping the film afloat. As Connie, he’s a contemptible loser of the lowest order, careening from one reckless, half-baked scheme to the next. Yet the actor’s magnetic performance provides a crucial handhold in a tale that is ultimately about stupid people making stupid choices.

The film opens with a scene that highlights Connie’s primary redeeming quality: his bone-deep loyalty toward his little brother, Nick (Benny Safdie), who has a mental disability, while also illustrating his recklessness and rotten judgment. Furiously barging in during a psychiatrist’s assessment of his brother’s intelligence, Connie hustles Nick out of the building, insisting that he should trust no one else to look out for his wellbeing. Connie contradicts himself in short order, however, by bringing Nick along as his partner in a brash daylight bank robbery. The brothers’ initially clean getaway quickly unravels owing to a dye pack, a car crash, and sheer panic, and Nick is eventually caught and shipped to Rikers Island.

This kicks off Connie’s long, daft night of the soul, in which he must somehow scrounge up $10,000 for Nick’s bail, lest his vulnerable brother spend the night locked up with violent criminal suspects. The less dye-stained proceeds from the robbery won’t cover this sum, so Connie drags his distracted girlfriend, Corey (Jennifer Jason Leigh), to the bondsman with her mother’s credit card in hand. Connie’s plight is not so easily resolved, of course, and from there he races through the neon-slicked NYC night, ricocheting through an obstacle course of freak occurrences, piss-poor decisions, and ordinary bad luck. At various points, his constantly evolving efforts to secure the needed cash involve a risky escape from a hospital intensive care unit, a cache of money in a derelict amusement park, and a plastic soda bottle full of liquid LSD.

It’s a criminal fiasco worthy of a Coen Brothers black comedy, but the Safdies privilege verisimilitude rather than exaggeration. Although it has its absurd moments, Good Time is deeply embedded in the gritty reality of low-income city life: bail bondsmen, fast-food joints, court clerks, midnight shifts, police evasion, and the never-ending search for a ride from Points A to B. The film draws from the urban crime pictures of Sidney Lumet and Martin Scorsese, but its closest kin, story-wise, are the realist dramas of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, preoccupied as they are with the wearying logistical details of life on society’s margins.

The film’s visual style, however, is a jittery, handheld incarnation of 35 mm-era Michael Mann: grainy, dark-gray shadow broken up with pools, streaks, and spatters of energy drink fluorescence. Beneath the action, Daniel Lopatin’s omnipresent electronic score bumps and buzzes, infusing the film with a relentless, anxious energy even during moments of relative calm. Holding it all together is Pattinson, a bundle of frayed nerves who pulls the viewer’s attention even (perhaps especially) when he’s screwing up and screwing people over. Good Time might not be enjoyable in the conventional sense—its depiction of humanity’s amoral ineptitude is so unglamorous, one might call it an anti-romantic crime picture—but it’s consistently enthralling filmmaking.

Good Time opens Friday, August 25 at the Landmark Tivoli Theatre.