Gone Baby Gone

Gone Baby Gone is actor Ben Affleck's directorial debut, starring his younger brother (and recent newcomer) Casey Affleck. The film centers around the disappearance of a young girl apparently abducted from her home. Morgan Freeman plays a police captain and Ed Harris one of his detectives, assigned to solve the case and rescue the girl. The missing girl's aunt, frustrated by a lack of progress on the second day of her disappearance, hires two private investigators to help with the case, Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) and his partner/girlfriend. Patrick, who grew up in the neighborhood and has connections in the murky Boston underworld, may be able to get information the police can't. Attempts to find the girl are hindered by her mother, a small-time criminal who only eventually and reluctantly admits that she might know who took her daughter.

The film has echoes of other, similar films, including Mystic River (which was written by Dennis Lehane, who wrote the book Gone Baby Gone was based on). There are also some strong similarities to the 2006 missing-child misfire Freedomland, where an inner-city, world-weary Black police officer (Samuel L. Jackson) must deal with the unreliable mother (Julianne Moore) of a missing child while the clock is ticking.

Overall, Gone Baby Gone is well acted—the unfortunate notable exception is the lead, Casey Affleck. Affleck is a decent actor, but he's vocally hamstrung, delivering most of his lines in such a low-key, trance-like manner that it's hard to know if he's bored, stoned, or just laid back.

Director Affleck has a nice eye for the seedy side of Boston, capturing lowlifes and scumsuckers in their environment. The script, co-written by director Affleck, is interesting and has some nice twists but is convoluted beyond necessity and ultimately a bit far-fetched. The film needed a clearer narrative and several fewer characters. Gone Baby Gone has some pacing issues as well; I thought the film was over about two-thirds of the way through. It wasn't, though, and somehow eked out another twenty minutes of Byzantine plotting before coming to its contrived conclusion. Ben Affleck clearly has the chops to make a good director (many actors don’t), but his screenwriting skills need some polishing.