Good Time (2017)

The Safdie brothers' Good Time is a grimy, propulsive crime thriller that treats New York's underworld as a fever dream. Robert Pattinson plays Connie Nikas, a small-time crook whose desperate night unfolds with the logic of a bad decision. The film has no interest in moral instruction. It never pauses to explain its politics or its sympathies. That refusal to sermonize is the movie's most defining feature. The camera stays close, the score pulses, and the audience is left to keep up.

The production's approach to casting is a study in selective authenticity. The Safdies filled small roles with real people: a bail bondsman played by an actual bail bondsman, a therapist played by a defense lawyer. Street casting gave the film texture. But the central role of Nick, Connie's developmentally disabled brother, went to Benny Safdie. The directors considered casting a disabled actor and decided against it, citing the aggressive schedule. The final scene was shot with the Epic Players, a theater company for neurodivergent talent. That gesture is real, yet it sits alongside the lead performance by a non-disabled actor.

Elsewhere, the cultural markers are thin. Women appear as peripheral figures, Corey and Crystal, with no feminist argument attached. The film features actors of color but makes no racial commentary. There is no LGBTQ content, no climate concern, no eat-the-rich thesis. The story is wholly fictional and contemporary, so no historical revisionism applies. Benny Safdie gained weight for the role, which is character work, not a body-positivity statement. Good Time is a 2017 film that predates the current era of on-the-nose cultural signaling. It remains a nasty, efficient genre piece, and it never once lectures us.