Stylishly Gritty, This Chase Thriller Really Is A ‘Good Time’

In recent years, the British heartthrob Robert Pattinson has gone out of his way to prove that there is life after Twilight. After years spent playing a shimmery, chivalrous vampire, he went all dark and dystopian in art-house chillers like The Rover and Cosmopolis, and he recently popped up in a terrific supporting role in The Lost City of Z. But Pattinson has never undergone a transformation as revelatory as the one he pulls off in Good Time, a nerve-rattling new thriller from the sibling directors Josh and Benny Safdie.

Pattinson plays Connie Nikas, a scuzzy, small-time crook from Queens who saunters through much of the movie sporting a gray hoodie, diamond stud earrings and cheap blond dye job. He is somehow both a catastrophically inept criminal and a quick-thinking improvisational genius, a master at getting himself out of one hair-raising situation only to plunge himself immediately into another.

Connie’s undoing, as well as his sole redeeming quality, is his love for his hearing-impaired, mentally disabled brother, Nick, played — in a brief but galvanizing performance — by Ben Safdie, doing a nice job of directing himself. We first meet Nick when he is undergoing a psychiatric evaluation, and his gruff, one-line responses to the therapist’s questions are a heartbreaking testimony to years of family neglect and abuse.