Don’t
feel you
need to be Gone Baby Gone from the theater just because Ben Affleck
wrote and
directed the movie (yes, THAT Ben Affleck, but don’t start
screaming in dread
or letting visions of Gigli dance in your head).
He’s pretty good at doing both, so stick
around for a movie you want to see.
Casey Affleck
stars as Patrick - a small time private investigator in Boston
who specializes in finding troubled
people (like junkies) who have gone missing.
It’s not a glamorous business, but it has
given him a certain reputation
within the community.
Patrick, like
everyone else in town, has become fascinated with the sad case of a
small
little girl who seems to have been kidnapped from her bedroom when her
mother,
Helene (Amy Ryan), dashed across the street for a moment. The family has asked
Patrick and his
partner/girlfriend, Angie (Michele Monaghan), to get involved in the
investigation – equally working with the police and digging
around where the
police cannot go.
Will Patrick and
Angie be able to find the little girl before it is too late? Is there more to the story
than we realize?
OF COURSE THERE
IS SOMETHING MORE TO THE STORY THAN WE REALIZE!
We wouldn’t have a movie if there
wasn’t more to the story than we
realize. I just
wish director Ben
Affleck would play up that mystery a little bit better.
Also co-written by Affleck and Aaron Stockard
(based on the book by Dennis Lehane), Gone Baby Gone feels too much
like three
distinct parts of a movie that have some trouble going together. Affleck needs to provide a
better flow for
the movie, so the audience’s energy and curiosity is always
being fed, instead
of giving us three breaks or breathers.
At
one point, I felt like Gone Baby Gone was over, only to realize we had
another
act to go. It
results in a clumsy
connection between all three acts instead of one complete mystery and
story.
Also, Affleck
has a tendency to overdirect Gone Baby Gone.
He beats us over the head with images of the
“real” Boston
or the underbelly of Boston
as we are inundated with a series of images like the beat up buildings,
the
people who are missing teeth and the bars where nobody wants to know
your name,
and you don’t want to know theirs. Yes,
we need to realize this is a strange subculture of a modern
metropolitan
American city, but it gets a bit too cartoonish at times.
However, I would
be happy and excited to see another Ben Affleck directed movie. He does a fantastic job
getting the best
possible acting performances from every person in the cast, and he
makes the
audience aware of the competition between Patrick and the Boston
police, which adds the needed tension
to get the audience involved. Plus,
Affleck’s strongest contribution to the screenplay and movie
is making the
audience aware that Gone Baby Gone is more than a kidnapping mystery. It’s also a
messy morality tale forcing the
audience to consider the gray areas between what is right and wrong.
Gone Baby Gone also features some fantastic acting from big names you know and a small
name
you better get to know. Casey
Affleck,
who put in an amazing (possibly Oscar worthy) performance in The
Assassination
of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, scores again as the street
tough kid
with a sharp mind and something to prove.
More than anything, Affleck helps us understand the
morality play
portion of the movie when Gone Baby Gone evolves from being a crime
drama into
a movie about making a very crucial, difficult decision. We see the pain on his
face as Affleck shows
us the conflict going on in Patrick, and how he wants to do the right
thing
even in the face of many people telling him he is wrong.
While Morgan
Freeman and Ed Harris put in very good performances in roles you might
not be
accustomed to seeing them in, it is Amy Ryan who steals the movie from
all of
the big names. As
the trashy mother with
questionable parenting skills and something more to hide, Ryan is the
embodiment of this underworld Ben Affleck wants to bring to the fore. She puts in a realistic
and show stopping
performance that would have become overly bombastic and scenery chewing
if it
wasn’t for her ability to know when to go for it, and when to
dial it down
enough to make Helene a human being instead of a cliché or
stereotype.
Gone Baby Gone is a strong directorial debut by a guy who could use a break, and
proves he has
what it takes to be involved in making movies for a long time. The next Clint Eastwood? Maybe it’s too
early to tell, but not out of
the question.
3 Waffles
(Out of 4)
Gone
Baby Gone is
rated R for violence, drug content and pervasive language.
Copyright
2007 - WaffleMovies.com
