Gone Baby Gone

Casey Affleck is in the midst of what is known as a break-out year. He stole Ocean's 13 from the bigger name stars and he is getting incredible reviews for his role in The Assassination of Jesse James by the coward Robert Ford. On top of that he grabbed the lead role in one of the better reviewed movies of the last few months, Gone Baby Gone. Of course it wasn't difficult to get the role since his older brother Ben Affleck co-wrote it and directed it. I know Ben's name being attached feels like a kiss of death, but remember he is behind the camera not in front of it. So, maybe, just maybe the man who has been a punchline for so long is doing his best to reshape the opinion people have of him. But, does it work?


The movie open on a press conference of the family of a missing girl. A missing 3 year old girl. Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) and his significant other, Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan) are private defectives who specialize in missing person cases. We do learn that normally they find people who just up and left, not kids who were kidnapped. The family hires them because Kenzie grew up in the neighborhood and he can "talk to people who will not talk to police." In this small rural section of Boston, guns are not out of place and everyone has the foulest mouth imaginable. The mother of the missing girl, Helene McCready (Amy Ryan) is a drug mule, a drug user and kind of a slut. She never seemed to care about her daughter until the little girl went missing. Kenzie promises to find her daughter and in order to do so he has to meet with a couple of detectives. Remy Bressant (Ed Harris) and Nick Poole (John Ashton) are the detectives Kenzie teams with and they do the usual interviews, track clues and whatnot. When they think they have figured out what happened they try and do an exchange without the knowledge of the police Captain in charge of missing children, Jack Doyle (Morgan Freeman). Doyle had his own kid kidnapped and killed earlier in his life and has made it his life goal to not allow that to happen again. From there the story takes a few twists and veers away from where you expect it to go, so I do not want to give anymore away.


As a director, Affleck is strong, confident and steady. The camera work is very solid and he finds a way to find a tenderness when showing us things of the missing child. In a world where everything is harsh, he finds a way to give us just a glimpse of the innocence of children. In those moments the movie is very heartbreaking and Ben Affleck deserves credit for that. Just as with Good Will Hunting though, he is a co-writer so I do not know how much he had to do with the script, but it is a wonderful script. The dialogue is intense, and multi-faceted and each main character is given a chance for a real depth of character. Affleck captures his city of Boston in the way it was meant to be captured in novel on which this movie is based. The footage of the city and it's inhabitants is very effectively used and the editing between them is seamless. The movie never loses steam as it becomes more of a character driven piece as opposed to a plot driven movie and I believe Ben is responsible for it. Thankfully he never appears on camera in a cameo or anything and he seems perfectly content to let his baby brother get the glory here.


And Casey Affleck deserves every bit of glory he is receiving. While being undersized compared to everyone in this movie, he commands your attention. His quiet voice, his deep confident eyes and his cocky attitude towards the beginning of this movie really set the tone for us to believe this guy is really as tough as he talks. Rarely rising above a whisper most of the time, he does his tough talking with his face, with his attitude and with his body language. His Kenzie doesn't bother with talking the talk, he walks the walk and Casey is brilliant. Ed Harris and Morgan Freeman add their usual solid efforts and Monaghan is equally effective as a woman who did not want to take the case because she did not want to find a dead 3 year old girl. But I think the true standout performance belongs to Amy Ryan. Her portrayal of the semi-grieving mother is a very raw emotional and real performance. It is a supporting role but she really holds your attention on screen, even in a scene where Ed Harris is interviewing her.


I absolutely loved this movie. Incredible, powerful and thought-provoking are all words I have used since watching it. Over 24 hours later I am still pondering some of things brought up by the movie. Patrick Kenzie is a very interesting on screen figure and as he questions everything we begin to internalize these questions. Towards the end of the movie Kenzie has a very big, major decision to make and in a theater of nearly 30 people, everyone was split as to what he should do. Should he make the right decision or the good decision? And when he made the decision the entire audience was discussing it on the way out and even int he moment I could hear those around me actively into the movie. In an apathetic world, it was so refreshing to hear people really going into this decision. I thought the end of the movie was perfectly fitting to the rest of the movie and really brought home the emphasis on the question of whether the right decision and the good decision are always the same thing and could choosing one over the other have ramifications. I really have no complaints about the movie and I imagine this will end up as one of my top 10 movies of the year and with as many movies as I see every year, that is certainly saying something!