It's more concerned with flattering our modern sensibility than truly plunging us into the mores of the 1920s.

It's not Goodfellas. It lacks the black humour and the relish for eccentricity for its own sake, and the ending verges on mawkishness. But it's great entertainment -- a cunningly wrought tribute to old-fashioned Hollywood and the Warners style.

Live By Night is a confusing jumble. But above all, it commits the cardinal sin of gangster movies: It's really, really boring.

Blame the genre’s ingrained pedigree, but a good gangster film needs a magnetic central figure, not this hollow suit.