Gone Baby Gone
Director: Ben Affleck. Screenplay: Ben Affleck, Aaron Stockard, based on a novel by Dennis Lehane. Cinematography: John Toll. Film editing: William Goldenberg. Production design: Sharon Seymour. Music: Harry Gregson-Williams. Producers: Ben Affleck, Sean Bailey, Alan Ladd Jr., Danton Rissner. With: Casey Affleck, Michelle Monaghan, Morgan Freeman, Ed Harris, John Ashton, Amy Ryan, Amy Madigan, Titus Welliver, Michael Kenneth Williams, Edi Gathegi, Mark Margolis, Madeline O’Brien, Slaine, Trudi Goodman, Matthew Maher, Jill Quigg, Sean Malone, Brian Scannell, Jay Giannone, William Lee, Jimmy LeBlanc, Kippy Goldfarb, Elizabeth Duff, Cathie Callanan, Cameron Henry, Bobby Curcuro, Matt Podolske. US. 113 min. 2007.
By David Sterritt
Ben Affleck scores impressively in his feature-directing debut, thanks partly to his brother Casey Affleck’s inspired performance as a private eye who’s hired by a working-class family to energize the search for their kidnapped child, whom they suspect the police department has given up as lost.
The movie’s grim verisimilitude is further enhanced by director Affleck’s refusal to soften the story’s many tragic twists and to compromise the desolation of its darkest scenes or the confusion of its most chaotic moments. He and coscreenwriter Aaron Stockard also deserve credit for letting the characters speak in realistically crass language; as someone who lived in the Boston area for years, I can testify that every four-letter word rings true, and the ten- and twelve-letter ones do too.
On the downside, there’s a gaping hole in the plot (why don’t the cops examine the corpse in the quarry?) that weakens the picture’s second half, and another that does the same for the denouement. These flaws aside, though, Ben emerges here as an extremely promising director, and Casey consolidates his position as one of the most exciting young character actors in Hollywood today.
