The gangster and his lewd tricks
Cast: Ben Affleck, Elle Fanning, Brendan Gleeson, Chris Messina, Sienna Miller, Zoe Saldana and Chris Cooper Director: Ben Affleck Genre: Crime, drama Running time: 129 minutes Showing: Century Cinemax Acacia Mall, Cinema Magic, Numax Cinema.
Joe Coughlin was once a good man, one who enjoyed sipping on the frothy drinks and discussing crime with contemporaries in an underground network of gangster-run speakeasies.
Amid the chats, Joe is hatching a plan capping on his dreams and ambitions that bridge on the downside of the law. Surprising though, he is a son of a Boston police superintendent, who made sure he brought up a law-abiding son.
Nonetheless, Joe, played by the movie director, Ben Affleck, turns his back on his strict upbringing for the spoils of being an outlaw. Good enough, there are rules fellow outlaws follow, which is fair enough.
But like it is said, rules are there to be broken, and soon Joe breaks one of the rules. He breaks one of the big rules. He steals the money and one of the molls in the gang to play as his protégé. This does not go well with the rest of the gang.
The movie is set in the 1920s, and the lead actor is a World War I veteran of Irish descent and the prodigal son.
He finds love in a mistress, Emma Gould, who is aligned to a notorious gangster of an Irish Gang of Boston who is does not bless her relationship to a fellow gangster.
When he cannot stand in the way of love, he warns her man that his bad deed would soon catch up with him.
Joe has had enough of the threats and talks his love into relocating to California as a plan to escape it all. Emma’s boss is not done. He sets her into staging her man into a trap which leads him into being beaten, brutally.
Joe is lucky the police arrive in time to save him from the fangs of death. The law has to take its course and when it does, he is sentenced to life in prison, which later gets reduced to three years. There is something funny to explain that.
All the same, the heartbroken Joe serves the time, only to find that his father has died from a heart attack due to the stress of Joe’s incarceration just shortly before Joe’s release. Wanting revenge against White, Joe volunteers his services for a vain reason.