Gone Baby Gone

Viewer Rating:Boston Burglar has rated Gone Baby Gone rating: 4 Star

As scriptwriter on Good Will Hunting and actor in Hollywoodland, Ben Affleck demonstrated his substance as a moviemaker. However, poorly chosen parts in a series of so-so films eroded any reputation he might have built up as a serious player. Now, with Gone Baby Gone, he has confidently swept aside any doubts about his abilities. He has taken Bostonian Denis Lehane's novel about child abduction and turned it into a mesmerising and unglamorous study of American working class life. Much has been made of Casey Affleck's outstanding portrayal of the young private detective at the centre of the story. But the true acting revelation is Amy Ryan's note-perfect depiction of the welfare mom who is sliding inexorably into a nether world of cheap sex and casual drug abuse. However, all of this superb talent seems wasted on a story which ultimately fails to convince. Without giving too much away, the central character is faced with a series of moral dilemmas, the last of which he resolves in a way entirely inconsistent with his behaviour up to that point. As a result, the film's climax feels artificial and contrived and, if Affleck stuck faithfully to the original novel, one wonders what the author was trying to convey here. That morality itself is meaningless? At least that would be consistent with the closing 'message' of Lehane's earlier Mystic River, as directed by Clint Eastwood, surely one of the most depressing movies of recent times.

Review published on the 26 September 2008 20:39