"Gone Baby Gone"

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I had a few problems with the first half of Gone Baby Gone when I first saw it three or four weeks ago. On top of which I was so whipped I had trouble keeping my eyes open. On top of which I had to be somewhere so I bailed at the one-hour mark, intending to catch it again in a more rested state. I saw it again last week and this time wide awake and right to the end, and it was a whole different deal.

Ben Affleck

I still have beefs, but the ending is quite strong -- deliciously disturbing, I'd say -- and in my book that's almost the whole ball game.

For the finale alone, Gone Baby Gone is a first-rate drama. It's also a formidable Boston crime film. The atmosphere is genuine, if not quite in the rich-underworld vein of Peter Yates' The Friends of Eddie Coyle. It's a morally complex film that leaves you teetering on a seesaw with a shot of irony that doesn't wash out, and in fact stays with you for days.

Ben Affleck has done a better-than-decent job in his maiden directing effort, and with the acclaim this film is already getting he'll have gone a long way to erasing memories of his career-destroying relationship with Jennifer Lopez. He's scored as a director, he can still work as an actor (as far as that goes) and he can kick ass any day he wants as a political commentator or candidate, even. He's totally fine.

The best kind of endings build to a climax and drive their thematic point home clear and true. But a Gone Baby Gone-type ending -- one that pulls you in conflicting ways with equal force, and both seeming like the "right" course -- is nothing to snort at. It's not quite up to the legendary ending of Eric von Stroheim's Greed, but it's aiming at the same archery target. (And it hits it.) And if you ask me it packs a slightly stronger punch than the finale of Clint Eastwood's Mystic River.

Eastwood's '03 film shares two things with Gone Baby Gone. Both are based on Dennis Lahane novels, and both are about decent working-class Dorchester folks who've pretty much given up on the law and have decided to apply their own solution or justice when it comes to the fate of their children.

I'm not going to spill anything specific, but Gone Baby Gone is basically about a search for a 4-year-old Dorchester girl -- the daughter of an empty, emotionally unstable floozie and coke addict (Amy Ryan) -- who's apparently been kidnapped, and a long search for the truth about what why she was taken, who took her and why.

The main problem, for me, is that Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro, the neigh- borhood private detectives who are called in on the case, are played by Casey Affleck and Michelle Monaghan.

Their performances (especially Affleck's) are solid, but there's no buying a couple of actors who look like they're in their mid to late 20s as case-hardened pros. Sorry, but I need to see people in their mid to late 30s (and looking it) playing these parts. (Affleck and Monaghan were 31 and 30 when they shot the film.) The movie tries to diffuse the issue by having a couple of characters say "how old are you?" to Affleck, but young is young.

(l. to r.) Affleck, Harris, Monaghan, Ashton

Plus there's a difference between a whodunit being "complex" and verging into "what the fuck?" territory. Maybe I'm just not smart enough (I got a few As but mostly Bs in high school), but I was having trouble following some of the twists and turns. There's a scene at a rock quarry that doesn't make a lot of sense. (I've seen it twice and I still don't know what happened.) My head was spinning during parts of the third act. Maybe Ben Affleck should have aped Clint's Mystic River pace, or otherwise made it a little easier for dummies like myself to keep up.

Amy Madigan plays the aunt of the four-year-old who hires Kenzie and Gennaro. Morgan Freeman plays a police captain and Ed Harris and John Ashton are detectives involved in the case. Titus Welliver plays Madigan's husband. Nobo- dy's interest or agenda is quite what it seems at first, but then crime whodunits are always peeling away at the onion.

I say again that a movie that ends this well deserves an audience. For all the irritants, Gone Baby Gone needs to be seen and thought about afterwards. It's unusual for a crime drama to leave you with this much moral aftermath. And all the hubbub about Casey Affleck's performance is warranted. He acts and sounds like a real Boston slouch-around, and he almost overcomes the too-young issue because of it. Between this and his arresting turn in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, '07 has been quite the year for him. Cheers.

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Posted by Jeffrey Wells on October 14, 2007 at 6:29 PM

comment #1

scooterzz says ...

maybe now you'll reconsider the suggestion a few of us have made re: placing amy ryan in the 'if there was a god' box????

Posted by scooterzz at October 14, 2007 11:29 PM

comment #2

gruver1 says ...

Wells to Scooterzz: Yeah, that's a fair suggestion. She's pretty good (which is to say hateful).

Posted by gruver1 at October 14, 2007 11:30 PM

comment #3

lazespud says ...

Amy Ryan was awesome in "the Wire" two years ago and it's cool to see her in role like this... She was pretty endearing in that role; it will be weird to see her as "hateful"...

Posted by lazespud at October 14, 2007 11:40 PM

comment #4

Filipe says ...

The film has a strong script, Affleck has some real good takes on the material, some good feeling for Boston, the acting is strong (despite the leads being too young) and the end is great, to bad Affleck is pretty awful director, this is one of the worst blocked professional films I ever seen, so lazily shot that I started to feel really bad about the poor editor who got a lot of footage that simply didn't flow into each other at all. At times, one suspects that those awkward close ups and weird camera placements were intentional. There's one scene that Jeffrey mentions that is very central to the action (everything that happens latter comes from it) that is botched by Affleck in such way, that it truly doesn't make any sense in its finished version. It's a shame because the film does a lot of things right.

Posted by Filipe at October 14, 2007 11:54 PM

comment #5

MiraJeffAICN says ...

Once again, Jeff and I seem to be in agreement. I thought Gone Baby Gone was amazingly predictable. Despite its many twists and turns, I figured out pretty much the whole movie about a half-hour in, and have the note to prove it. And the rock quarry scene is not directed well, that's for sure. That said, Affleck redeems his patchy script with the final 20 minutes. Affleck and Ryan are great throughout. Monaghan's character is particularly poorly written, having no function besides shadowing Casey until the last 20 minutes, when she begins to serve a purpose. I thought Ed Harris was also excellent. Being an actor himself, it's no surprise Affleck seems to have a knack for working with actors, and he gets colorful performances from the entire cast top to bottom with the exception of Monaghan, who definitely has a cuteness about her, but she tends to blend in and come off a tad lifeless on screen. A better actress could've done so much more with a role like this. Casey continues to impress me after Jesse James. Overall I thought the movie was pretty good, mainly because Affleck raises some very interesting moral questions and the final shot gives the audience hope, while the rest of the film is incredibly bleak. Ryan was solid. I'm not convinced she has the stuff for a Supporting run but she could if there's support for the movie. I just can't get over how telegraphed everything was at the beginning, a script weakness not helped by the obvious casting decisions. I hadn't been less surprised at a film's conclusion since blue-eyed Leland Orser turned out to be The Bone Collector.

Posted by MiraJeffAICN at October 15, 2007 12:47 AM

comment #6

MiraJeffAICN says ...

I think that last post sounded too harsh. What I should've said is that GBG has one hell of an emotional climax that definitely hit me as hard as say, Reservation Road. I definitely teared up at parts, a testament to Affleck's script and the performances he gets. It's not as tight as it could be. Affleck takes us through too many hoops. But it's pretty good, and overall has to be considered a success. And for the record, I'm a HUGE Ben Affleck fan. I'm predisposed because I'm from Boston and thus love Good Will Hunting, but I've talked to Ben a couple times and I find him so fascinating and charming and intelligent. He's not as charismatic or magnetic as Clooney but when he speaks it's generally best to listen. The guy's still learning the craft, and he got a little defensive at times at the Variety Screening Series, but I think he's a class act and hated how the media counted him out aftet the Bennifer debacle. I just like watching the guy, whether it's Dazed and Confused, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Sum of All Fears, Hollywoodland or heck, even Surviving Christmas. And he was one of the few entertaining things about Smokin Aces. Still can't forgive him for Paycheck though. But people who actually saw Gigli have only themselves to blame. I could make an easy joke but there's no way I saw that one.

Posted by MiraJeffAICN at October 15, 2007 1:02 AM

comment #7

James Leer says ...

The comparison to "Mystic River" is apt because this Dennis Lehane ending is similarly unbelievable. Don't want to spoil it, but the situation stumbled upon in the last ten minutes is so absurd and such a "no way this character would do this and think no one would find out" stretch that it blighted everything that came before it for me.

Posted by James Leer at October 15, 2007 1:33 AM

comment #8

Geoff says ...

You wanna know how it was easy for just about any film fan to know that Leland Orser was the The Bone Collector? They gave it away in the film's trailer. I'll never forget the theatrical trailer, as well as the commercials, blaring his whiny voice from parts of the movie. It was unmistakable, especially after seeing Se7en, which, again, the trailers kept comparing it too.

Posted by Geoff at October 15, 2007 1:35 AM

comment #9

Sax says ...

As usual, the one thing no one comments on is the book on which the film is based. There are actually five Kenzie-Gennaro novels,and taken together, in the right order, they form a coherent story line: one five-part romantic epic. This is obvious franchise material. So why pick the fourth book to start with? It just seems like the usual Hollywood myopia and arrogance. Lehane apparently likes the movie, but I'm sure he was just relieved that anything got to the screen intact. Look at other crime fiction adaptations -- Michael Connelly's Bloodwork is a good cautionary tale about page to screen translation. Clint Eastwood fucked that one up basically just because he could. I mean, does he really think he knows more about story-telling than Michael Connelly? Books like these are the equivalent of the seven page illustrated recipe for croissants in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. You approach the project with certain assumptions and one of them is that Julia Child knows a hell of a lot more about croissants than you do. So you don't add an extra pound of butter (or substitute peanut butter) because of your own 'auteur' status. If you follow instructions, they come out perfect. But that requires both skill and humility, traits few directors (and even fewew studio bean-counters) possess. My advice in the case of this film: read the books. I guarantee they will be far more entertaining:
A Drink Before The War
Darkness, Take My Hand
Sacred
Gone, Baby Gone
Prayers For Rain.

Posted by Sax at October 15, 2007 2:11 AM

comment #10

Meegosh says ...

They picked the 4th one because it was the best one. Although I liked them all. Also, this was the only one with a powerfull, think about it ending, which everyone seems to think is the best part.

Posted by Meegosh at October 15, 2007 6:03 AM

comment #11

Zimmergirl says ...

"but there's no buying a couple of actors who look like they're in their mid to late 20s as case-hardened pros."

That's a great point - the same problem will be for Ryan Gosling in the upcoming The Lovely Bones. On the other hand, clearly Affleck wanted to work with Casey and he wanted to film the book so he was caught on that one. I loved the ending of Mystic River - actually, the ending made the film for me. It was so beautifully done, so smart.

Posted by Zimmergirl at October 15, 2007 6:13 AM

comment #12

Heleno says ...

Agreed on most counts - I think I liked Affleck (C) more than you. It's not quite as good as his Assassination performance, but it's up there, especially at the end.

Posted by Heleno at October 15, 2007 6:32 AM

comment #13

Meegosh says ...

I can see the point about them appearing to young but the books seem to make them appear about this age as well. So I'd say its just as much Lehane's fault as anyones.

Posted by Meegosh at October 15, 2007 7:27 AM

comment #14

KeithNYC says ...

Jeff,
Great review. To say the ending may pack more of an emotional punch then Mystic River really says something. One minor problem though:

"he can kick ass any day he wants as a political commentator or candidate, even."

Anytime I have seen Affleck on television discussing politics he sounds like a little kid trying to sound smart. He never offers anything insightful or interesting and talks in cliches.

Hey, maybe he would make a good politician!

Posted by KeithNYC at October 15, 2007 10:37 AM

comment #15

Dave Polands Gut says ...

Is there are more ponderous and boring commenter than MiraJeff?

Thanks for the novels.

Posted by Dave Polands Gut at October 16, 2007 7:37 AM

comment #16

Sean says ...

All I want to know is this:

How much is Omar in the movie?

Or, in this movie, I guess his name is "Devin". But how much? Amy Ryan + Dennis Lehane is good, but Omar pushes it over the edge; as a Wire fan, I must go.

Posted by Sean at October 16, 2007 9:45 AM

comment #17

Meegosh says ...

Sorry to disapoint but unless they messed with the script a lot, which it doesn't sound like they did. Devin/Omar is not in the fil much. If they ever make the first or second book he is in those a lot more.

Posted by Meegosh at October 16, 2007 1:05 PM