Issue 54 - Prohibition

Welcome to Issue 54 of Deep Life Reflections, where I share five things I’ve been enjoying and thinking about over the past week.

In this issue, we venture back into the era of prohibition with Dennis Lehane’s noir novel, Live By Night, and step onto the bloody streets of 1930s Chicago in Brian De Palma’s stylish and cinematic, The Untouchables. Along the way, we’ll contemplate the enduring forces that shape the world of crime and challenge the moral compass.

Join me as we explore this week’s Friday Five.

1. What I’m Reading

Live By Night. By Dennis Lehane.

Dennis Lehane writes about crime and the tough choices people make. His novel, Live By Night, tells the story of Joe Coughlin, who goes from a nineteen-year-old small-time thief to one of America’s most feared and respected gangsters.

Live By Night takes place in the 1920s—the Prohibition-era, when selling alcohol was illegal in the United States. Joe’s journey takes him from the cold, tough streets of Boston to the stifling heat and rum runners of Tampa, Florida, where he builds his empire. It’s a journey plagued by violence, double-crossing, power struggles, and Joe’s sense of trying to do the right thing within the dangerous world he exists in. Lehane brings the Prohibition-era to life, with the illegal speakeasy bars, corrupt police, and the crime bosses who ran it all. He includes real historical figures like Charles ‘Lucky’ Luciano, who helped create the infamous National Crime Syndicate.

Lehane, one of America’s best crime fiction writers, is from inner-city Boston and no stranger to life’s struggles. He’s gifted at writing about the dark underbelly of crime and the moral ambiguity of his characters. Filmmakers have adapted many of his books into popular films, such as Mystic River, Shutter Island, and Gone Baby Gone. He once told an interviewer, “I’ve always been fascinated with loss of innocence or corruption of the soul at a young age.”

Live By Night is classic Lehane and through the character of Joe Coughlin, we get another take on the American Dream gone awry. The title comes from how Joe lives his life at night, which is when he feels he comes alive, using his natural talents such as his quick-thinking and guile.

Awarded the 2013 Edgar Prize for Novel of the Year, Lehane’s novel shows the cost of ambition set against the backdrop of a semi-glamorous bygone era, as well as a mirror for today’s struggles with crime and conscience. Some things don’t change. The Joe Coughlin’s of the world still exist, and I suspect, always will.  

2. What I’m Watching

The Untouchables. Directed by Brian De Palma.

We stay in the Prohibition-era. On my flight to Thailand last week, I watched Brian De Palma’s stylish, epic, and violent, The Untouchables, which was nominated for four Academy Awards in 1987 (winning Best Actor in a Supporting Role for Sean Connery.) The film dramatises the true story of federal agent Eliot Ness’s crusade to bring down the ruthless Al Capone in Prohibition-era Chicago.

Kevin Costner plays Ness with conviction, and Robert De Niro gives a menacing performance as Capone. The film’s focus, however, is on Ness and the small, incorruptible team he assembles, including veteran cop Jim Malone (Connery) and rookie George Stone (a young Andy Garcia). Filmmaker De Palma assembles his own gifted team, including renowned playwright David Mamet, virtuoso composer Ennio Morricone, and accomplished cinematographer Stephen H. Burum. Giorgio Armani also provided the costumes. This teamwork enables De Palma to recreate 1930s Chicago magnificently, with a deadpan script that hardly wastes a word and an operatic score that feels authentic to the time. The Untouchables is two hours of pure entertainment. (Watch the superb opening titles to get a taste.)

The film also takes a sombre inspection of moral fibre and what causes it to fray. Ness faces a moral, ethical, and physical battle against Capone and his underworld, committed to do everything within the law, but realising the law has its limits. This leads to one of the best—and most famous—lines in the film when Connery’s Malone tells him, “You wanna know how to get Capone? They pull a knife on you, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That’s the Chicago way!” This sets up the carnage that follows, as well as putting Ness in a perpetual ethical dilemma.

At the end of the film, a reporter asks Ness what he will do if the government repeals prohibition, to which he replies, “I think I’ll have a drink.” Prohibition was indeed repealed in 1933 and Ness later did become a heavy drinker in a twist of irony. When he died in 1957, his role in bringing down Al Capone had been completely forgotten. It was only when The Untouchables television series began in 1959, that the public learned of Ness’s heroic deeds. The rest is history.

3. What I’m Contemplating

Yesterday, a judge sentenced Sam Bankman-Fried, the once-celebrated founder of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange, to 25 years in federal prison for fraud and conspiracy. Only recently, Forbes 400 ranked Bankman-Fried as the 41st-richest American, only for him to experience one of the most dramatic downfalls in recent memory. But his fall from grace is not unique in American history. The stories of Live By Night and The Untouchables, with their tales of crime and moral conundrums, find their modern counterpart in Bankman-Fried’s ruination, as another example of the struggle between ambition and legality.

While the crime landscape has changed significantly over the past century, especially with the influential role of technology, other aspects remain strikingly similar. Alcohol may be legal today but today’s prohibition-era equivalent, the War on Drugs, has led to the rise of powerful cartels and a cycle of violence, mirroring and exceeding the worst violence of the 1920s. Likewise, the pursuit of the American Dream, corrupted by greed and power, is still prevalent today, personified by figures like Sam Bankman-Fried. Different era, different product, but identical driving forces.

In a poignant moment during sentencing, the judge recalled Caroline Ellison’s testimony—once Bankman-Fried’s girlfriend and now the star witness against him. Ellison had shared a telling anecdote: Bankman-Fried had told her that if he could flip a coin—either humanity is destroyed, or the world becomes twice as good—he would do it. This persistent recklessness seems to be a hallmark of those who find themselves seduced by power and greed, whether it’s white collar crime or the hard-nosed crime of the prohibition-era.

Bankman-Fried played a high-stakes game. It’s not a game he’ll be able to play again anytime soon.

4. A Quote to note

“Ethics is knowing the difference between what you have a right to do and what is the right thing to do.”

- Potter Stewart, U.S. Supreme Court Justice

5. A Question for you

Can you think of a time when you had to choose between what you had a right to do and what you felt was the right thing to do?

I will share my answer to the above question this week. A couple of years ago, I faced a decision that tested my principles. While driving, a lorry driver, uninsured at the time, collided with my car. Legally, I had the right to press charges and seek compensation for the damage. However, when I discovered pressing charges would mean the driver, not his employer, would bear the financial burden—a penalty severe enough to cost him a month’s wages and likely his job—I stopped to consider the wider consequences.

I recognised the lack of insurance was the fault of the company, not the driver. With this in mind, I decided not to use my legal right to press charges but to cover the costs myself, which would have much less of an economic impact on me. I didn’t want to be part of a system that is sometimes flawed. Often I don’t get a choice. This time, I did.

Thanks for reading and being part of the Deep Life Journey community. As always, have a great weekend.

James

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