Gone Baby Gone (2007)
Directed by Ben Affleck
When 4 year old Amanda McCready disappears from her home and the police make little headway in solving the case, the girl's aunt, Beatrice McCready hires two private detectives, Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro. The detectives freely admit that they have little experience with this type of case, but the family wants them for two reasons—they're not cops and they know the tough neighborhood in which they all live.
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To give you some idea of the movie's tone, author Dennis Lehane also wrote "Mystic River," a movie to which this one owes a strong debt.
Based on a novel by Dennis Lehane, the novelist who also penned Mystic River, Affleck's film is a companion in dark mood to that 2003 award-winning film adaptation.
For his directing debut Ben Affleck, and co-writer Aaron Stockard, adapt a Dennis Lehane ("Mystic River") novel that resists being converted into the usual three-act structure like a circle being jammed into a square.
There are similarities in tones of vengeance and retribution to another of Lehane's books-turned-movies, the best picture Oscar nominated "Mystic River," and just as in that film, a couple of preposterous late twists derail the momentum generated by the otherwise hard-hitting tale.
A testament to just how good "Gone Baby Gone" actually is would be to mention it in the same sentence as "Mystic River" (another Lehane dramatization, not coincidentally) and "The Departed," films also set in and around Boston, films directed by two of the greats (Clint Eastwood and Martin Scorsese respectively).
Taken from a novel by Mystic River author Dennis Lehane, this simple story of an abducted little girl, the surrounding investigation, and the suspicious mother at the center, has the kind of narrative power and acting prowess that elevates it above other like minded dramas.
Based on the Dennis Lehane novel, "Gone Baby Gone" is a detective yarn set in some part of the Boston area so rough that the characters in "The Departed" would refer to it as the bad part of town.
A testament to just how good "Gone Baby Gone" actually is would be to mention it in the same sentence as "Mystic River" (another Lehane dramatization, not coincidentally) and "The Departed," films also set in and around Boston, films directed by two of the greats (Clint Eastwood and Martin Scorsese respectively).
Other than that, this is the most authentic-looking Boston film I've seen in years, including "The Departed."
Even the Boston-set "The Departed" would have benefited from some restraint on Jack Nicholson's part.
Affleck’s feature debut is so visually and thematically astute, in fact, that it makes you look anew at Mystic River and last year’s mean-streets-of-Beantown flick The Departed and wonder how filmmakers like Clint Eastwood and Martin Scorsese could have missed what Affleck captures here.
(Two recent crime dramas set in Boston, Mystic River and The Departed, were helped enormously by marketable casts and, in the case of The Departed, a decent amount of action.)
When four year old Amanda McCready (Madeline O'Brien, "The Legend of Lucy Keyes") disappears from her Dorchester home, her Aunt Bea (Amy Madigan, "Field of Dreams," "Pollock") enlists the aid of local private detectives, Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck, "Ocean's Thirteen," "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford") and Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan, "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang," "The Heartbreak Kid"), to get into the neighborhood's underbelly and find her.
In fact, the only other non-acting credit on Affleck's r�(c)sum�(c) is that little Oscar(r) thing he picked up ten years ago for co-writing "Good Will Hunting" with his best bud Matt Damon.
Half of the Oscar-winning Matt-and-Ben “Good Will Hunting” duo.
Affleck, whose screenwriting Oscar for "Good Will Hunting" is now almost a decade old, wrote the script with Aaron Stockard, from the novel by Dennis Lehane (author of "Mystic River").
Affleck's loyalty is near legendary (supposedly he's still friends with all of his exes) and in addition to picking Stockard — who appears to have no film credits to his name other than assistant work on "Good Will Hunting" and "The Talented Mr. Ripley" — he makes the bold choice of giving the main role to his younger, lesser-known brother, Casey.
Drawing on his own innate understanding of his hometown -- experiences that helped shape the Oscar-winning Good Will Hunting -- Affleck shot on location and even cast local non-actors in supporting roles.
Not so with "Gone Baby Gone," which is, in fact, a mature, engrossing drama that features a script that bests his Academy Award-winning screenplay for "Good Will Hunting," which he co-wrote with friend Matt Damon.
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The little-known Ryan and Ashton, best known for the "Beverly Hills Cop" movies, are especially good, as is Titus Welliver as the missing child's uncle.
Much in the same way we struggled with the messages thrown at us by Paul Haggis in 2005's Crash , here we face equally heady topics but no answers are provided.
I love the moral discussions, the difficult "Sophie's Choice" decisions.
(I'm not as keen on the horror-show denizens of a local stash house--the film briefly crosses The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and the harrowing crack house scene in Jungle Fever--but you take what you can get.)
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A sometimes-solid actor (“Hollywoodland,” “Boiler Room”) prone to weak movie choices (“Bounce,” “Daredevil,” “Gigli”).
My ears are still bleeding from the accents in "Thirteen Days" and "Blown Away" and it's nice to hear some authentic sounds.