Who Gets to Relive 'Live by Night'?

Ben Affleck has chosen Dennis Lehane’s Live by Night as the source material for his next directorial effort and it’s got all the makings of another gangster hit. Joe Coughlin is a young stick-up artist who fashions himself an “outlaw” rather than a “gangster” in 1920s Boston. A botched robbery that leaves a cop dead and an ill-advised romance with a young woman put him in the sights of Boston’s biggest gangster, Albert White, and his own father, longtime Boston police officer Thomas Coughlin. He’s sentenced to five years behind the forbidding stone walls of the Charlestown prison. While inside, he saves the life of the terrifying elderly gangster Maso Pescatore and soon finds himself in charge of a host of illegal activities for his new benefactor. Pescatore manages to secure an early release for his young protégé and Joe is soon heading south to become the king of the illegal rum producers on the Florida coast.

This is Joe Coughlin’s show – whoever plays him will be in every key scene and be charged with charting a young man’s ten-year journey from a callow youth to a businessman and father burdened by responsibility and regret. One can almost hear the studio heads screaming “Channing Tatum!” out their office doors, but Joe needs to be a little less imposing when we first meet him. A young Ewan McGregor would have worked really well, but we don’t have a DeLorean with a flux capacitor handy. We think this would be a great opportunity for Ben “Comeback” Affleck to extend a hand to another young actor who got lost in Megabudget Land and cast Taylor Kitsch. The story follows Joe from approximately ages twenty to thirty. Kitsch is just north of thirty, but it was only six years ago that he was cast as a high school student. He can project strength without being imposing and vulnerability without being pathetic. Anyone who could bring Tim Riggins to life deserves a second shot at showing multiplex audiences his stuff.

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