Gone Baby Gone (2007) 8/10
Private detectives Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) and Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan) investigate the disappearance of a four year old girl. Even after the case is closed, their lives are haunted by it. Directed by Ben Affleck.
There’s a great deal to commend in Gone Baby Gone. It has an extraordinary sense of place. This is the movie you imagined Ben Affleck might make after Good Will Hunting; suffused with Boston neighborhoods and rooted in the particulars of that life, those accents, those people, that reality. That sort of thing can easily turn into parody or mockery, but the “ahhm” you put in your sleeve in this movie isn’t the “real good, then” of Fargo. It doesn’t make you laugh, it just is. And it really works.
The plot moves rapidly. Early on I realized that this couldn’t just be about the missing girl, because the pieces were coming together too quickly. I never could predict what would happen next, it was twisty and turny and smart.
In a featurette, Ben Affleck talks briefly about what it was like for his brother, a character actor, to switch to lead. But in a sense, Casey isn’t a leading man, he’s a character actor who happens to have the lead in this cast. Certainly, he doesn’t have the commanding presence of Ed Harris or Morgan Freeman, both playing cops in the missing child unit. And somehow that works: Patrick Kenzie, a little in over his head, a little outclassed, trying to stand up to these formidable cops.
The movie also has a clear point of view, navigating the waters of moral uncertainty with a conviction that this is what the story must be about.
So why isn’t this a truly great movie? I’m not sure I can say. Maybe too many twists and reversions. Maybe a sense of loss and guilt is not enough to carry the movie. Maybe Michelle Monaghan is just too jarringly inadequate—this is the second movie I’ve seen her in where I though, Wow, she’s trying so hard to keep up with the real actors. There’s something that feels off-balance, and maybe that is in having the most charismatic actors (particularly Ed Harris) off to the side.
In the end, I can certainly recommend the film, and it certainly speaks well for Ben Affleck’s future as a director, but it’s not a work of genius or anything like that.
This is, by the way, the last Oscar-nominated film (Amy Ryan as the missing girl’s mother for Best Supporting Actress) that I managed to squeeze in before the ceremony—I watched it Sunday afternoon.
I watched Gone Baby Gone last night. I thought it was a well made movie, Affleck’s direction was competent without being flashy. He really got the flavor of the neighborhoods (Philadelphia has similar neighborhood flavor). Ed Harris and Morgan Freeman turned performances of their usual quality, and Amy Ryan chewed the scenery impressively. I think she probably studied Sean Penn’s Jimmy in Mystic River for inspiration. I had the same feeling you did about the correlation between Casey Affleck the actor and the character v. Harris and Freeman – very effective. On the other hand I thought Michelle Monaghan came across well, her character and the way she played it was jarring in its contrast, but I think that added to the entirety of the movie.
I thought Amy Madigan looked horrible – don’t know how much of it was makeup and how much age, but I was struck by the idea that 20 years ago she would have been playing the Amy Ryan role (see her McCoy in Streets of Fire). And every time I saw John Ashton I expected Judge Reinhold to show up…..