Starring: Titus Welliver, Amy Ryan, John Ashton, Madeline O'Brien, Morgan Freeman Directed By: Ben Affleck Average Rating: Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 Audience Rating: R (Restricted) Binding: Blu-ray Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, Subtitled, Widescreen Label: Miramax Home Entertainment Number of Items: 1 Region Code: 1 Release Date: February 12, 2008 Running Time: 114 minutes Theatrical Release Date: October 19, 2007
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: BLU-RAY DISC Genre: DRAMA/PSYCHOLOGICAL DRAMA Rating: R UPC: 786936726312 Manufacturer No: 05365800
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
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.
Just don't read the book After I read this book by Dennis Lehane, I went out and rented the movie. I wanted to see how the director portrayed some of the more interesting side characters in the plot. Cheese Olman for one. The book was full of Dennis Lehane's complex portrayals of interesting characters, and the quality of the plot twists were in line with other Dennis Lehane books, such as Mystic River. THAT movie, by the way, was a great adaptation of a great Lehane book.
I was appalled. The characters were so altered that I had no ability to compare these portrayals between the book and the movie. All characters became stereotypes reflecting today's typical scripts. I hope Dennis Lehane had no part in creating the script for this movie - it was dull, shallow, and the language unnecessarily went into the gutter, the characters were mutated to uninteresting ones with no depth. Even the characterization of the 2 main people, Angie and Patrick, made them shallow and dull.
The two most spectacular actors in the movie, Morgan Freeman and Ed Harris, were poorly directed. They had no depth and appeared to just read their lines - they are so much better than that. Amy Madigan was portrayed as a strident, witchy woman, very unlike her character as written.
The book will give you a much better understanding of all the characters. Don't waste your time with the movie.
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