Gone, Baby, Gone Review
by [email protected] (dnb AT dca DOT net)October 26th, 2007
GONE BABY GONE
A film review by David N. Butterworth
Copyright 2007 David N. Butterworth
***1/2 (out of ****)
With "Gone Baby Gone," Ben Affleck should finally silence a few of his longtime critics (not all of them mind you; there's no getting around "Gigli").
Affleck (Ben) doesn't actually appear in the film. That honor goes to his younger brother Casey. No, "Gone Baby Gone" is Affleck's directorial debut and what a fine one it is too. Watching it, you'd swear this couldn't be the first film the clean cut, 35-year-old from Berkeley, California has helmed. But it is. In fact, the only other non-acting credit on Affleck's rÃ(c)sumÃ(c) is that little Oscar(r) thing he picked up ten years ago for co-writing "Good Will Hunting" with his best bud Matt Damon.
So Affleck's kinda sorta paid his dues. He's had his ups and downs, project wise, from the highs of "Hollywoodland" to the lows of "Surviving Christmas," not to mention all that cameo stuff for Kevin "Clerks" Smith. But he can certainly write a screenplay; he's proved that much. Just the one, mind you, until now... Affleck co-writes again, this time with Aaron Stockard, adapting Dennis Lehane's novel of the same name for the screen.
So who knew he could direct? And better yet direct so well? I guess he did.
A testament to just how good "Gone Baby Gone" actually is would be to mention it in the same sentence as "Mystic River" (another Lehane dramatization, not coincidentally) and "The Departed," films also set in and around Boston, films directed by two of the greats (Clint Eastwood and Martin Scorsese respectively). "Gone Baby Gone" does not seem out of place when positioned alongside, moreover compared with these fine films. That Affleck can pull off such a comparison with his very first stint in the director's chair is quite amazing.
Amazing isn't too far removed from the truth when it comes to critiquing Casey Affleck's performance in the lead role (and he's rubbing shoulders with the likes of Morgan Freeman and Ed Harris here; call them the Eastwood and Scorsese of the acting world if you like). Working for and with his brother has given Casey an added impetus, reason to (im)prove himself, to make "Gone Baby Gone" a family success. So confident, between them, are the Afflecks that Casey is in pretty much every scene (or at least it feels like it). It's his performance that carries and enlivens the picture, pulling and pummeling it along.
With an Affleck in more or less every corner, "Gone Baby Gone" is compelling stuff, a gritty drama about a private investigator, Patrick Kenzie, searching for a missing 4-year-old in Boston's hardscrabble Dorchester neighborhood. Michelle Monaghan (currently on display in "The Heartbreak Kid" remake) plays Kenzie's lover/partner Angie Gennaro. Their search upends a veritable cross-section of volatile personalities, from the young girl's aunt (Amy Madigan), who initially hires the pair of gumshoes; Amanda's drug-addled mother (a scarily real Amy Ryan); and members of Boston's finest (Freeman, Harris, John Ashton) to a gangster named Cheese and a trio of undesirables who wouldn't seem at all out of place in a Rob Zombie horror flick.
The twists and turns come a little fast in the final reel but they're absolved unerringly by the film's ethical dilemma of a cliffhanger. "Gone Baby Gone" is slick, assured, and absorbing, an out-and-out triumph for the Brothers Affleck.
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David N. Butterworth
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