Ben Affleck: Gone Baby Gone (2007)

[Chris Knipp]

BEN AFFLECK: GONE BABY GONE (2007)

A rough and arresting debut

Review by Chris Knipp

In the poor South Boston neighborhood of Dorchester (writer Dennis Lehane's birthplace) the TV news and an avid public are all over a story: a little girl has been kidnapped. Family members want Patrick Kenzie (Ben Affleck) and his girlfriend and partner Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan), young missing persons detectives, to investigate. Police Captain Jack Doyle (Morgan Freeman) objects. Police detectives Remy Bressant (Ed Harris) and Nick Poole (John Ashton) aren't friendly. But Patrick and Angie are tough and they persist. It's they who unravel what turns out to be one of Lehane's typically tangled webs.

Gone Baby Gone doesn't completely work as a movie, but it's still a very interesting directorial debut for Ben Affleck--who took a wise risk in trusting his younger brother Casey for the central role. Casey's no novice, but never a star till this year. He's arresting as the shifty, insecure Ford in Andrew Dominik's arty Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, and he embodies innocent idealism equally effectively here. Ben also took a risk in deciding to go for grit, with many actual denizens of the low life world it depicts used as minor actors.

Dennis Lehane's story set in the white ghettos of Boston, which forms the movie's basis, isn't as deep and dark and mystical a tale as his Mystic River, filmed four years ago by Clint Eastwood to great acclaim. But the issues this film raises are simpler, plainer, and ultimately more troubling: they go to the roots of the uneasy equation of morality and class. And despite use of some solid pros, including Ed Harris and Morgan Freeman, this one doesn't have the distractions of Eastwood's star-studded cast.

Casey Affleck is small. He's nice looking, but not as commanding or handsome as Ben. He has a rusty, reedy voice that doesn't carry; it just stands in the air. He also has a quality of freshness and surprise, as if the camera's caught him off guard but he refuses to flinch. His Patrick Kenzie will stand up to the toughest, most evil people in Dorchester: he has balls of brass without seeming to know it, or to know any other way. It's this strength from the early scenes, where he's tentative, yet unyielding, that gives conviction to his later choices.

The film is anchored by Morgan Freeman in the important secondary role of the police captain, a man who's lost a child to kidnapping himself and now heads a Crimes Against Children unit. The other main role is Ed Harris' as the feisty, mysterious detective from Louisiana; Harris shows his stuff here; he's hard and slick without cliché. Some commentators have objected to Ben's use of bloated bar bums and other authentic white ghetto locals; they've said these salty characters are too distracting and pull the story down into an inferno of lowlife immorality.

But that's the point. From the first, when Bea McCready (Amy Madigan) and her husband, Lionel (Titus Welliver) appear to seek Patrick and Angie's help three days after the highly publicized abduction of their little niece Amanda, things feel fishy. This is a world so hopeless and off center it crawls with sleeze. It soon emerges that Amanda's single mom Helene (Amy Ryan), Lionel's sister, is a real mess, more into turning tricks to buy drugs than minding her little girl. She's a drug runner herself, and the abductors are probably people she's embroiled with.

The incredible, troubling question that will arise is whether Amanda's mother is at fault herself; if she cared; and obviously, if she was a fit mother. But can she be faulted for the lowness of her own life? Taking us into convoluted lives and twisted emotions warped by deprivation, addiction, and traumatic loss, the story at times seems like a slum version of something from James Ellroy's ultra-lurid (but highly cinematic) "L.A. Quartet," with similarly twisted machinations and motives in a Lehane permutation. Nobody is what they seem to be, except for Patrick and Angie. The unraveling revelations may strain credulity, but they keep you paying attention.

The movie is strong on atmosphere and situation, not so good on action. Most of what happens seems to come through flashback or review. The investigation tale ends, and then it picks up again later. I'm not sure the movie ever recovers its energy, and yet still t it gets much more interesting, despite the fact that it flounders a bit somewhere midway in the denouement. But then the moral dilemma comes hard in the face of the young investigators--and us--an issue so clearly posed and firmly dwelt upon that we carry it out beyond the credits.

[oscar jubis]

I posted this elsewhere a few weeks ago, before there was a thread for the film.

Re: Gone Baby Gone

If there's one thing I expected from a Ben Affleck movie set in Boston is a realistic depiction of the environs; a specific and compelling sense of place. I wasn't disappointed. The use of non-actor locals and shooting in real locations are obvious assets. You can almost smell the spilled beer during a couple of bar scenes.

The plot, based on a book by Dennis Lehane, involves the abduction of a neglected little girl. It's hard not to care. The narrative, structured as a mystery-thriller, gets increasingly more convoluted and intriguing. Lamentably, every twist during the second half of the film is more illogical than the preceding one. There are some serious lapses here. The next paragraph contains SPOILERS.

Two of the most obvious ones: a private dick (Casey Affleck) not even being arrested for shooting an unarmed, kneeling bad guy in the back of the head. Another involves a cop going into a crowded bar with a funny mask to kill someone about to give information to Affleck. There are others but perhaps you won't notice until you think about it later, when you're not focused on keeping up with the narrative. The movie is being praised partly because of an inherent moral dilemma posed when Affleck must choose between two divergent options. However, this happens at the very end of the film. It would have been infinitely more compelling from an ethical and moral viewpoint to make the cop played by Morgan Freeman a more central character, perhaps a protagonist. Albeit difficult for any filmmaker, it also would have been interesting to witness some of the exceedlingly difficult (and unseen) adaptation any child would experience in this scenario. (END of spoilers)

From the point of view of characterization, Affleck's partner and sidekick Angie is totally wasted; she's given little to do. Nice cast all around though, with Ed Harris, Amy Ryan (as the kid's druggie mom) and Amy Madigan (as her aunt Bea) most memorable.

[Chris Knipp]

I think Mystic River's later plot revelations were far-fetched too; the convoluted plotting as I mentioned suggested to me the author of the Black Dahlia, and is a fault in the source that Affleck's adaptation didn't sharpen up. Since the cops are all corrupt, maybe Patrick's getting away with his shooting isn't so surprising at all in the context. Agreed that the Morgan Freeman character is a little too marginal, brought in at the beginning and end as a sort of motivational plot Deus ex Macchina. A friend of mine thought it hard to believe Angie and Patrick could have functioned as lost person detectives--too young and naive. As you note what makes the movie good is grit and good acting and vivid characters--and above all, the "moral dilemma" posed at the end for Patrick and Angie, on which they disagree. I like one or two other reviewers, find the final shot haunting and real. This is the way tough choices often end up in our laps, with drudgery and uncertainty ahead.

I have not read Lahane, but I think one is aware of him as an author after the attention drawn first to Mystic River and now to this. The grit is not only what's to be expected from Ben Affleck but what makes the marriage with Lahane a good one.

Some reviewers have been vicious in attacking what they see as the Oscar-seeking miserablism of the story, but I don't agree at all. I like stuff like this. I'm debating where I'll going to rate the movie at year's end. I think the Affleck brothers deserve some encouragement for a comeback and a leap forward here.

[oscar jubis]

"I like stuff like this" too but I wish it was better. There's enough here to suggest Afleck shoud try again but not enough for me to consider listing the film at year's end.

[Chris Knipp]

I haven't made that decision one way or another but I'm considering it, because he is in the "best first film" category, a serious contender for that.

[oscar jubis]

The best first film on my list would be the same as the best film, if I was to make a list right now.