GONE BABY GONE (2008)

Gone Baby Gone Review

Matt:

Length: 115 min

Tagline:
Everyone wants the truth… until they find it.

Précis: Excellent thriller about a kidnapped girl that also intelligently presents some tricky moral questions.

Review by Matt:

Gone Baby Gone, Ben Affleck’s first foray into film directing, is pretty much better than all the films he has acted in put together (and that’s without giving negative points to Gigli or Pearl Harbour). It makes you wonder if he should leave the acting to his brother Casey, who stars in this film, and concentrate on developing his directing and screen writing. Because Gone Baby Gone is a mature and well-crafted thriller and, even better, a thought provoking study in human nature.

The story opens in gritty backstreets Boston where four-year-old Amanda McCreedy has been kidnapped. The police investigation, led by Captain Jack Doyle (Morgan Freeman), is going nowhere and time is precious in these kinds of cases. Enter local private detective Patrick (Casey Affleck, recently nominated for his performance in The Assassination of Jesse James) and his girlfriend/partner, Angie (Michelle Monaghan). They’re hired by little Amanda’s relatives to augment the investigation, using their local street smarts to coax out the reticent neighbourhood folk.

Author Dennis Lehane, upon whose novel this film is based, has set a number of his crime stories in blue-collar Boston (including Mystic River, which Clint Eastwood adapted into an excellent film in 2003). It’s a place full of rough and proud characters, and amongst its population dwells a special breed of low-life. The missing girl’s mother, Helene (Amy Ryan), is the first the detectives scrape off the neighbourhood’s underbelly. She’s a neglectful mother: drug-addicted and obnoxious to boot. Amy Ryan plays her so convincingly that you’d think she had taken the part to fund her next hit.

For a while the plot proceeds a bit like a Law and Order episode, with the detectives sussing out local thugs, and working heatedly with the two assigned police detectives, Remy Bressant (Ed Harris) and Nick Poole (John Ashton). But the story quickly grows more complex and gripping. Although the crime is the centrepiece of the film, it’s the subtle layers constructed around this event that are really rewarding. Gone Baby Gone craftily snares you in a web of moral questions at the same time as it entertains you with a fast paced and intense plot. The film itself remains admirably distant. It sets up the detail skilfully but then mostly lets the natural thorniness of the dilemma speak for itself. I thought only a few parts of the plot hit a wrong note, but mainly because of its standoffish approach. It seemed to occasionally skim unjustifiably over a few issues (which I won’t detail here to preserve the film’s mysteries).

One might think that using Dennis Lehane’s novel would allow a director to basically point and shoot and let the quality material speak for itself. Certainly much of the dialogue is intelligent and presumably lifted straight from the novel. But there are a number of other excellent things about this film which make it work so well in the cinema. The cinematography brings the dirty streets of Boston alive, and the performances are universally fine. Casey Affleck’s understated (or sleepy, even) acting style works for me, and Ed Harris’s performance as the passionate detective is also terrific. The support cast is also of a rare high standard – the dialogue wouldn’t work if it wasn’t punched out with the Boston attitude. Ben Affleck made a smart choice filming in his beloved hometown.

Overall this is a first rate, intelligent thriller. It’s certainly not a beam of joyous sunshine, but it’s hard-hitting and chilling without being disturbing or gratuitous. Gone Baby Gone is one of the best examples of the genre I’ve seen for a while, and it’s admirable for its punchy, easy-to-follow exposition of complex issues and for its sophisticated framing of vexed moral questions. You’re likely to find it hard to not continue debating after the credits.