Movie Review: Good Time

Occasionally, when it comes to movie titles, I don’t bother to decode them before I’m in the theater, and then I have a moment a few minutes in where I genuinely wonder why – like the recently released “Good Time,” someone came up with them. Then the lightbulb of belated realization dawns and I nod. Oh yes, the concept of irony.

Robert Pattinson, who stars as a lowlife with a mentally impaired brother (Benny Safdie), has the night from Hell in “Good Time,” as he makes decision after wrong decision which sends him to a spiral of destruction from which it looks as if there is absolutely no good outcome. In “Rain Man,” also about a con man with a mentally impaired brother, Tom Cruise takes Dustin Hoffman, who plays an autistic savant, to count cards in Vegas, but there Tom at least attempted to ensure that Dustin had a halfway decent time by cutting his fish sticks in half and making sure that he didn’t miss Judge Wapner on TV. Here Robert plunges poor Benny in at the deep end by springing him from an institution then bringing him along on a bank robbery of all things – we can’t be sure how much Benny grasps what’s going on, but we do know that it won’t end well. Sure enough, Benny winds up in jail, which leads to Robert attempting again to rescue him. This involves much lying, starting with his girlfriend (a disheveled Jennifer Jason Leigh), which leads him to an impromptu stay in an elderly lady’s apartment where he hooks up with her teen granddaughter (Taliah Webster – here the only character with any smarts), then winds up partnering with another lowlife (Buddy Duress) who may be even more pathetic than Robert. The three hit White Castle for some munchies – one of the few “happy” moments in the film, then get waylaid at an amusement park after hours where they run – gasp – into even more trouble. After more run-ins, Robert attempts to conceal himself from the authorities by dying his hair with peroxide which makes him look oddly like a young Kurt Cobain, but that doesn’t work well either, and eventually things end on a somber note.

“Good Time” is a movie that is undeniably uncomfortable to sit through but also riveted me to the screen for the entire running time. There’s a dearth of sympathetic characters, but there is a lot of tension and drama in wondering where the whole mess is going to end. I hope Robert gets at least an Oscar nod out of this because even though the movie has flaws, his performance is impressive.