Product Description: Critics are calling Ben Affleck's directorial debut "mesmerizing" (Peter Travers ROLLING STONE). When two young private detectives (Casey Affleck (GOOD WILL HUNTING) and Michelle Monaghan MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE III) are hired to take a closer look into the mysterious disappearance of a little girl they soon unravel a multitude of twists and turns where nothing is what it seems. Ultimately they must risk everything -- their relationship their sanity and even their lives -- in the search to find her. Casey Affleck and Morgan Freeman are electrifying and Amy Ryan (CAPOTE) delivers "a vibrant knockout performance" (Kenneth Turan LOS ANGELES TIMES) in this edge-of-your-seat crime drama. GONE BABY GONE "will have you talking long after it's over" (Christy Lemire THE ASSOCIATED PRESS).System Requirements:Running Time: 114 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA/PSYCHOLOGICAL DRAMA Rating: R UPC: 786936727487 Manufacturer No: 05373800
Amazon.com: For his initial offering as director, Ben Affleck returns to the site of his first Oscar: South Boston. (He and Matt Damon shared the award for Good Will Hunting.) Hot on the heels of his moving turn in Hollywoodland, Affleck's Dennis Lehane adaptation marks one of the more seamless actor-to-filmmaker transitions in recent years. Ostensibly, a procedural about the search for a missing child, class and corruption emerge as his primary concerns. First off, there's low-rent private eye Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck, equally adept in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford). Then there's the girl's drug mule mother, Helene (Amy Ryan, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead). She and Patrick grew up in Dorchester, but he took a different path, setting up an agency with his girlfriend, Angie (Michelle Monaghan). Helene's aunt, Bea (Amy Madigan), hires the duo to augment the investigation, and they team up with Captain Doyle (Morgan Freeman) and Detective Bressant (Madigan's husband, Ed Harris). The authorities don't appreciate the interference, but Patrick knows how to get the local populace talking, and he soon finds there's more to the story than anyone could possibly imagine. Hard-hitting, but never soft-headed, the evocative end result proves Affleck has a flair for this directing thing and that his little brother can carry a major motion picture with aplomb. Gone Baby Gone belongs on the list of great Boston crime dramas, along with The Departed and Mystic River, Clint Eastwood’s take on Lehane. --Kathleen C. Fennessy
Don't Read the Book First Let's get one thing out of the way first: if profanity in movies bothers you, don't watch this one. According to the director's commentary, there are over 200 swear words in the movie, to the point where it's almost a distraction early on. I'm not sure what the point of that was, since the book doesn't have nearly that many, and books don't have to go before rating boards. This is definitely not one for the whole family to watch.
Which brings me to my main problem with the movie: I've read the book. It's the fourth book in a series by Dennis Lehane, the author of Mystic River. The five books follow private detectives Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro, and they're some of my favorite suspense/mystery novels. Not many authors can tell stories like these while simultaneously exploring their characters to the depth that Lehane does. One who does a similar job is Stephen R. Donaldson, but that's another review.
I know it's not fair to blame a movie for not having everything the book has, or for being less complex, so I'm trying not to do that. I know if you tried to faithfully reproduce these books on film, you'd need several hours (which is why I think most novels should be TV miniseries, not feature films). But some things about the characters still bothered me.
Casey Affleck, who plays Patrick, is just too young and pretty. In the books, Patrick is regularly beaten up or shot. He's 35-40 years old, and feeling the aches and pains of a life with too many hard knocks. (Lehane even said he took a break from writing about Patrick and Angie when he looked back at the books and saw how much of a beating he'd been giving them, and decided they deserved a break.) Affleck does a good acting job, but it's a different character; I don't think he ever even gets a split lip.
Angela is even worse. In the books, although we see the story through Patrick's eyes, he and Angela are very much equal partners, and she's saved his bacon as often as the reverse. Here, although Michelle Monaghan looks pretty much exactly like Angie looked in my head, she's practically a mouse except for a couple scenes. She mostly just tails along with Patrick, and when they have their big disagreement at the end, it comes out of nowhere. (Starting with the fourth book really hurts here, because there's no history to explain where they're coming from.) Looking at the reviews, some people didn't even know if she was Patrick's wife, assistant, or what. That character was a major disappointment in the way it was written.
Almost as disappointing is Bubba. Lehane describes him as "six feet four inches, 235 pounds of raw adrenaline and disassociated anger. And he'd shoot anyone who blinked at [Patrick] the wrong way." Movie Bubba is a fat kid who shows some menace, but nowhere near the barely controlled mayhem of the real Bubba. He's a fairly standard Hollywood drug dealer, and we never get any indication of the way he feels about Patrick and Angie. No time for that, I suppose.
So if you want a great story, with deeply drawn characters who go through the wringer, get the books, starting with A Drink Before the War. Having said that, the movie is pretty good in its own right. The crime plot is scaled way back, and isn't any easier to understand for being simpler, but it's still suspenseful and entertaining. The way it was shot in Boston with a lot of locals as extras gives it a "real" feel that serves the story well. I'm not usually a person who notices direction unless it's bad, but I think Ben Affleck did a good job here.
I like Casey's voice-overs; his voice matches the character better than his looks. Amy Ryan is good as the mother of the kidnapped girl, although I was surprised to see she was nominated for an Oscar for mostly acting stoned and crying a lot. Her character is more likable here than in the book, but she's still easy to loathe, which is critical.
The real star might be Ed Harris, who plays his character to the hilt. He's electrifying every time he's on screen. It's too bad that some of the plot simplification required scaling back his character, so his motivation ends up being much simpler than it was originally, but it's still a great performance. Come to think of it, I don't know if I've ever seen a bad performance from him.
I'm giving it three stars, for people who can take the profanity. It might deserve more than that, but it's hard for me to see past how much better it could have been, if they'd been more faithful in reproducing the characters, especially Angie and Bubba. Maybe someday someone will do the series right, starting at the beginning and using TV to accommodate the full stories. Until then, this is a serviceable take on it.
Gone Baby Gone review by Brandon Great, great movie about a missing young child. This movie has a lot of twist and turns. The story is great and makes the viewer think a lot.
Strong Directing Debut From Ben Affleck Ben Affleck continues his return to respectability with his directorial debut Gone Baby Gone. Exploring an area he knows quite well, South Boston, Mr. Affleck elicits strong performances from a first rate cast including his brother Casey in the lead role, Morgan Freeman, Michelle Monaghan, Ed Harris, Amy Ryan, Amy Madigan & Titus Welliver. The movie revolves around a missing child search that turns into a kidnapping plot involving police corruption. There is a dark edge to the film with a mix of salty and earthy South Boston characters that add even more gruffness. Although this film didn't receive the Academy Award recognition of another Dennis Lehane adaptation, Mystic River, I found Gone Baby Gone less pretentious and overacted and ultimately more enjoyable.
Powerful! This is one of the most powerful movies I've seen in a long time. Watch this movie and refer it to everyone you know. It is very interesting to talk to people about their reactions to this movie. The point of the movie is not about whether you're Irish, your neighborhood, etc. The reviewer who was insulted about the characters' ethnicity TOTALLY missed the point. This reaches much deeper. Check it out!
Has its flaws, and some big ones, too, but still achieves something near greatness Ben Affleck's directorial debut, based on a novel by Dennis Lehane, who also wrote Mystic River was pretty good to me. Affleck's direction is more than adequate. I'm sure he's aping Clint Eastwood's film version of Mystic River much of the time, and there's one scene that's way too reminiscent of Se7en, but he shows a lot of skill. He's great at capturing his hometown of Boston and the people who live there.
The story revolves around the investigation of a missing girl. Morgan Freeman and Ed Harris are two of the major investigators for the police. The aunt of the missing girl hires Casey Affleck and his girlfriend, played by Michelle Monaghan, to do private investigation on the side, because they can maybe find some secrets that the girl's mother (Amy Ryan) might be hiding. It's a gripping mystery story, and it arrives at one quite satisfying twist. But then there's another twist. The second big twist is completely brainless, and then the previously excellent film starts to fall. This isn't unlike Mystic River, where, when we finally found out why Tim Robbins has been acting so strange all the time, I just had to slap my forehead. Gone Baby Gone is able to pull itself up a bit from its head-slapping plot revelation in its final moments, but I was still left feeling cheated. I also have to complain that Monaghan, as lovely as she is, adds very little. Would Affleck's character really put his girlfriend in such dangerous situations all the time? I'm sort of glad we're spared the whole cliché chatter where one of the two lovers fears for their significant other's safety, but bringing the beautiful woman into a powerful drug dealer's den sounds like a hostage situation waiting to happen.
Casey Affleck did deliver his second fine performance that year, though it isn't as good as his Robert Ford, which I think might some day be considered iconic. Credit to Affleck's direction that the film can still be considered good after some should-be fatal flaws so I say watch it and see it for yourself.
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