Twilight made Robert Pattinson one of the biggest movie stars in the world, but he was not content with being a teen idol. By the mid-2010s, Pattinson had worked with auteurs by the likes of David Cronenberg, James Gray, and Brady Corbet, among others. But no other role had the kind of transformative impact as Good Time (2017). In Good Time, Pattinson plays a small-time crook whose clumsy bank heist ends with his mentally disabled brother (co-director Benny Safdie) in police custody. He hatches haphazard plans to get his brother out in a night of bad decisions and poor execution.

Good Time came about after Pattinson approached Josh and Benny Safdie about making a film together. In this career-turning role, not only does Pattinson dress like a street crook and talk like a New Yorker, he also embraces the panic-inducing energy of the Safdie brothers’ mainstream breakthrough.

Joshua Henry Safdie (b. 1984, United States) and Benjamin Safdie (b. 1986, United States) are independent American filmmakers and actors based in New York City, who frequently collaborate on their films. Josh and Benny graduated from Boston University in 2007 and 2008, respectively. Daddy Longlegs (2009) was the first film they directed together. Josh and Benny are best known for writing and directing the crime thriller Good Time (2017), which received highly positive reviews from critics and was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival. In 2024, they announced that they would pursue separate creative paths: Josh began to produce for other directors and is developing a solo directorial project, while Benny expanded his acting career by appearing in films such as Oppenheimer (2023) and the TV series The Curse (2023–2024).