Gone Baby Gone (2007)

 gone baby gone
I loved this movie thought it was great kept my full attention through the whole movie hated to stop it to go to get a snack The ending was a little surprising Not so happy with that. wish the ending would have turned out different, but overall I really enjoyed the movie May 11, 2008

 Another Win For a Boston Team: The Afflecks
It seems as though Boston has taken on a life of its own. Perhaps it is the fact that we are home to the indisputably best baseball, football and basketball teams but there is something else that intrigues the rest of the nation about Boston. Maybe it's the fact that those not from here find the accent intriguing, maybe they yearn for seafood right off of the boat or maybe its that the historic appeal of the city reminds us of our American heritage.

But filmmakers now see Boston as an interesting location to highlight in films, as well. One need not think back any further than The Departed to have images of what Boston is all about: a sort of rough and tumble blue collar city with a set of characters that will never be forgotten. One might say that Boston has a way of never being gone.

But what if one of Boston's own children goes missing? Does the same rough and gruff blue collar nature not care as much as suburbia? Or does Boston respond the same way as the rest of the country?

Written and directed by hometown hero Ben Affleck, Gone Baby Gone, based upon a book by Dennis Lehane, is a rather decent film that focuses on a child gone missing and the resulting search and lengths that go into the case.

The film stars Ben's brother Casey Affleck as Patrick Kenzie, a private investigator hired by the aunt and uncle of a young girl from Dorchester that has gone missing. Though Kenzie typically does not work these kinds of cases, he persuades his partner and love interest Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan) to take on this case due to the emotional pull anyone would feel when a child goes missing.

Kenzie and Gennaro are quickly brought up to speed about the case by Capt. Jack Doyle of the Boston Police Department and he grants his assurances that the PI's hired by the family to help out on this case will have the full cooperation of the Boston Police Department. The lead detective investigating the case for the BDP is Det. Remy Bressant (Ed Harris).

Bressant at first seems hesitant about the entire operation that now has civilian PI's joining him in tracking down the potential kidnapper that has stolen the child. What Kenzie and Gennaro believe to have had happened is that a Haitian drug kingpin of the Boston area may have kidnapped the child due to the fact that the child's mother Helen McCready (Amy Ryan) may have scammed money from the drug dealer in a drug delivery deal gone bad.

Though it seems at times that Kenzie and Gennaro are on the right track in terms of tracking down the alleged kidnapper, a series of unforeseen subsequent actions always seems to get in the way of their work.

What finally comes about in terms of the resolution of the kidnapping certainly is quite unforeseen and is a well crafted and interesting twist to the rest of the story.

Although the film is directed by Boston native Ben Affleck, it is unforunate that the rest of the cast at times seems to have missed the entire Boston accent. There are times when the accent seems spot on and other times in which the accent sounds nothing like what the accent of Boston truly is.

The one thing that disappointed me about this film is that there seems to be a misconception that the Boston accent has an inherently built in propensity to throw in random profanities the same way as we might forget to pronounce our "R's" correctly. The language in the film seems to be a bit over the top and not overly necessary.

Being from the Boston area, it was nice to see that a great deal of the film was in fact filmed on location and did indeed show several recongizable sites around the greater Boston area. The picture quality in this film seemed spot on and highlighted the neighborhoods depicted in the film brilliantly.

Amy Ryan, who played the role of the missing girl's mother was a 2008 Nominee for Best Actress in a Supporting Role and rightfully deserved such a nomination. Ryan played the role of the oft strung out junkie mom quite well and seemed to embody the role that she was cast for nicely.

Gone Baby Gone certainly is a film that warrants being watched and thanks largely due to the interesting storyline at hand is a rather riveting watch. The movie fits nicely into the premise that no matter what Bostonians might do, they always do it well.
May 10, 2008

 great debut
Ben Affleck makes a spectacular directorial debut with his effort on GONE BABY GONE, getting wonderful performances across the board from his brother Casey to the small Boston regulars who fill in the background and amp up the authenticity on this terrific film. His co-authoring the adaptation is also a fine effort. The movie is gritty and real and well done. May 8, 2008

 Casey At The Bat Carries The Day
Like Clint Eastwood's Mystic River (2003), Ben Affleck's earnest but misguided directorial debut, Gone Baby Gone (2007) simultaneously panders to, coddles, sensationalizes, and exploits a tier of American society that might be labeled "the uneducated lower classes."

Establishing shots at the film's beginning reveal inner city streets occupied with people who uniformly appear worn, defeated, disenfranchised, desperate, angry, and hopeless. They are overweight and garishly dressed: stringy hair, sunken eyes, and pasty complexions seem to the permanent order of the day.

Unsurprisingly, within a very short time, a high percentage of these people--or others who look and act exactly like them--will be revealed as substance abusers, bar fighters, drug runners, dope dealers, liars, 'crooked cops,' child molesters, kidnappers, and abusive parents and spouses, like bargain-basement sociopaths all.

If Gone Baby Gone were a simple genre thriller, none of this would matter in the least; but Affleck has clearly conceived his project as another kind of film entirely. Like Mystic River, the overly-sensitive, precious tone of Gone Baby Gone suggests that it is socially relevant, wise, meaningful, and important, as if Affleck is courageously peeling back the curtain on a neglected, despised, and victimized segment of society, and carefully revealing its tragic truths to a presumably more affluent general public.

Affleck, who also co-wrote the screenplay, appears to expect the viewer to both sympathize with and pity the film's shiftless, corrupt characters, who, by an apparent act of God, are completely incapable of conducting their lives in a cautious, responsible, disciplined, mature, and rational fashion. Violence, rage, substance abuse, aggressive stupidity, cursing, and sadism, are, strangely enough, their only apparent behavioral options.

As a result of the film's skewered and self-limiting perspective, the 'controversial' ending, in which private investigator Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) has to make an ostensibly difficult and critical decision about the fate of a young child, falls flat, since the screenplay expects its audience to ignore the fact that newly-retired police chief Captain Doyle (Morgan Freeman) has proven untrustworthy at best and a complete wild card at worst.

Indulgently, Gone Baby Gone asks the viewer to forgive Captain Doyle his many, largely-off camera trespasses because...decades ago, he once lost a young child under circumstances to those occurring in the present. And the loss of that child, apparently, is cause to 'understand' and forgive any subsequent action taken on the Captain's part, no matter how many bodies, innocent and otherwise, have recently piled up around him.

Despite its stereotypical characterizations, unconvincing dialog, implausible and never-ending plot complications, and the murky bleeding heart philosophy that suffuses and almost sinks the film, Ben Affleck still shows a remarkable talent as a first-time director. At its best, Gone Baby Gone is an intelligent and engaging film.

By far the film's greatest strength, however, is the remarkably grounded performance by brother Casey Affleck in the lead role. Seeming never less than fully alert and thinking at full tilt, the confident and poised younger Affleck successfully carries the film through its many unlikely twists and turns and unnecessary mystifications.

April 29, 2008

 Bad ending
I had heard a lot about this movie and I was excited to get it. Most of the performances were very good and I thought Casey Affleck was good and believable in this role. Michelle Monaghan made a good team with him and was gorgeous as usual. The other major cast members gave good performances.
The story is intriguing where you have to follow this guy go through the investigation and he gets some bum leads and some good ones.
The thing I didn't like about the movie was the didactic that the state knows better what to do for kids as opposed to their parents.
Why did Ben Affleck need to shove this bleeding heart liberal message down our throats at the end? It ruined the movie for me.
Almost a really good movie.
April 28, 2008

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