Gone, Baby, Gone
By Jason Revill
It would be wrong of me to let you guys read this review without, in the sake of full disclosure, letting you know that I am a bit of a Ben Affleck apologist. Yeah, yeah I said it. Go ahead and make all your snide Jersey Girl and Gigli references here. I have no problem admitting that the man has made some, let’s say, unwise career choices, but he was pretty good in Hollywoodland and he’ll always have Good Will Hunting and Chasing Amy to his credit. Now in his directorial debut in Gone Baby Gone, Affleck should pretty easily win over naysayers.
When a four year old girl goes missing in one of Boston’s toughest neighborhoods, the family approaches local private detective Patrick Kenzie (Affleck). Reluctantly, he takes the case and finds that even though the police are willing to do whatever it takes to find the child, Chief Jack Doyle (Freeman) and Detective Remy Bressant (Harris) are hesitant to accept outside help.
What you have here is a great cast, including Michelle Monaghan, Morgan Freeman and Ed Harris, giving performances completely befitting their characters without taking it too far and turning into some over the top cliché. With his award worthy performance in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and now here as Patrick Kenzie, Casey Affleck is having a pretty good year to say the least. He plays Kenzie as a man who’s not particularly the greatest guy but when it comes down to it he knows what’s right even if everyone else tells him it’s wrong. But to do so he not only has to be able to navigate a world that he is familiar with but not really a part of, but accept the consequences of his actions. However, the real star of the film is Amy Ryan as the lost girl’s mother, Helene. She is a junkie whose daughter’s kidnapping is almost more of an inconvenience for her than anything else and would risk the life of her own child just to keep herself out of trouble, but at the same time she seems to really enjoy the modicum of local celebrity that the tragedy has given her. In a time when there are a lot of complaints about the number of good roles for women, this is one that absolutely deserves a nomination.
I, for one, want to be the last one to be a jackass and criticize Clint Eastwood or Mystic River, but it’s subject matter and the fact that they are both based on Dennis Lehane novels begs mentioning in any discussion of Gone Baby Gone. For the sake of full disclosure, I should say however that even though I like Mystic River I was not as enamored of it as apparently the rest of the world was. As much as I like the direction and the story, I felt that the acting was a bit hammy and never really seemed authentic and that’s where Gone Baby Gone’s real strength lies. I consider myself a bit of a connoisseur of white trash and within the first ten minutes of this movie I was seeing something that was as pure an example as I had ever seen on screen. By casting Bostonians in supporting roles Affleck is able to catch a level of realism that I think Mystic River lacked. I read a criticism of this technique the other day that basically said that he had to cast locals because he wasn’t proficient enough of a director to get that authenticity on his own. Personally, I would argue that it’s much more effective and realistic if you get someone close to the source rather than have a big name actor dress down and do a funny accent. That’s what makes Peter Soderbergh’s Bubble such a great film.
Gone Baby Gone is quite simply one of my favorite films of the year. Sure I have some problems with there being a little too much visual misdirection, but overall it’s not nearly enough to ruin the film. If you want a street level crime drama where life is depicted in all its shades of grey and even doing the right thing doesn’t seem like doing the right thing, then go see this movie. It’s a directorial debut that even surprised an Affleck apologist.
The Grade
- Story: A
- Acting: A
- Visuals: B
- Originality: B
- Enjoyability: A-
- Overall: A-
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