You must admit, Ben Affleck knows how to string a story together. Affleck penned the script for Gone Baby Gone along with co-writer Aaron Stockard, adapted from Dennis Lehane’s novel and set out on his directorial debut and he succeeded at almost every turn.
Gone Baby Gone takes us back to the first time Affleck impressed us when he teamed with his buddy Matt Damon to pen the Oscar-winner Good Will Hunting. Yeah, this one heads back to Boston and it is a place that you can tell just by the way this picture is shot and how the words play so well off each other that Ben feels at home here. And casting his little brother Casey in the lead role of private detective Patrick Kenzie makes it all that much better.
Casey already knocked the socks off everyone with his performance in The Assassination of Jesse James, playng the mild-mannered Robert Ford, but he pulls a complete 180 with this one as his character has something of a little man’s syndrome. He is forced to keep puffing himself up to gain respect and despite his meager frame he pulls it off effortlessly. I still contend that when he sings, “Thought I had a double-burger,” from the back of the car in Good Will Hunting he damn near stole that film and in this one he owns it.
Moving along, Patrick is called in on a kidnapping case as a 4-year-old girl has been abducted from her coked out mom and Patrick along with his business partner/girlfriend Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan) are hired by the family on the side to look deeper into the case. As the days tick by it seems the girl will never be found, but as much as the film is about finding the little girl, it has a much deeper story of morality at play and it is a doozy. Trust me, if on your way home you aren’t asking your friends what they would do in “that” situation you really need to turn the car around and go watch it again.
As I said, Ben’s casting of Casey is brilliant and so is the addition of Michelle Monaghan, who plays the perfect partner to Casey’s character. The two work off each other exceptionally well and you really do believe in the relationship they are portraying. Ed Harris also turns in a good performance as the cop heading up the investigation and a lot of good things have been said about Amy Ryan who plays the child’s mother. I am not sure what it says for an actor to say they played a coked out stupid mother well, but in Ryan’s case she nailed it.
Probably the only casting decision I didn’t really like was Morgan Freeman as police captain Jack Doyle. Early on in the film Freeman comes in dressed in his full-on police garb and he is such a dominating actor he seems almost too large for the part. It is a small issue, but it was one that struck me the minute I saw him on screen.
Outside of a couple of pacing issues and a couple of nagging story details at the end, Gone Baby Gone is an excellent film and I can only hope that Ben will stick to writing and directing and keep his face off camera. I know people gave him props for his performance in Hollywoodland, but for the most part he has never really impressed audiences as an actor. Luckily, Ben is ambitious and hasn’t let the gossip rags or criticism keep him from trying new things. Considering how good Gone Baby Gone is I hope he continues down this road and leaves the acting to the professionals.
