Gone Baby Gone Review
By Joe Lozito
Ben and "Gone"
After the success - and Oscar win - of "Good Will Hunting", Ben Affleck's career went into what can only be called freefall. While pal - and Will Hunting himself - Matt Damon rose to moderate acclaim before being re-Bourne, a string of poor choices ("Forces of Nature", "Pearl Harbor", "Daredevil") and poorer performances (see previous list, and note I haven't even mentioned "Gigli") made Mr. Affleck a media whipping boy. Like so many others (Paris, Britney, Lindsay, etc), the press seemed eager to see him to fail. Eventually though, the success of the over-praised George Reeves biopic "Hollywoodland" became labeled a career "comeback". Wisely, Mr. Affleck appears to have learned from his past. With "Gone Baby Gone", he tries his hand, for the first time, at directing. And it seems his real talents may lie behind the camera.
Adapted from the Dennis Lehane novel by Mr. Affleck and fellow first-timer Aaron Stockard, "Gone Baby Gone" follows an investigation into the disappearance of a 4-year-old Boston girl. When the child's mother Helene (Amy Ryan, by turns sympathetic and aggravating) proves to be too self-absorbed to do any good, her aunt (Amy Madigan) takes matters into her own hands, hiring private detectives Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro. Once you get past the idea of Casey Affleck and Michelle Monaghan as private eyes, their Patrick and Angie prove to be a charming duo and the rest of the movie flows from there. "Baby" is reminiscent of another Lehane adaptation,
"Mystic River" - but without the histrionics.
As you'd expect, Patrick and Angie run afoul of the local police - particularly Detective Remy Broussard (Ed Harris, great as usual) and Captain Jack Doyle (Morgan Freeman, ditto). But Patrick is from the streets and his connections to the local culture prove invaluable to the case. Boston, particularly Dorchester, is a character all its own in the film. The native accent, porch-dwelling characters and working-class vibe prove to be the perfect environment for a noir-ish detective story. And both the Afflecks feel completely at home in their natural habitat. The film features another surprisingly effective performance from brother Casey (after
"The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford"), while Ben's direction is solid and lacks the self-conscious flourishes of a first-timer.
The film's one fatal flaw is that it achieves a climax about halfway in (no spoiler details here, don't worry) and spends the rest of the film trying to regain momentum. It's a daring move, and one that's crucial to the story, but it nearly kills the film's pace. For those who stick it out, however, it's worth it. The film's denouement reveals that "Gone Baby Gone" is about a lot more than a child's abduction. It's something that's likely to have you talking for days after, and more than it was reasonable to expect from Mr. Affleck's directorial debut. After all this time, it seems his comeback is finally here, baby, here.
