Gone Baby Gone

I'm not quite sure when Ben Affleck became a national joke. It was probably after the spectacular flops Jersey Girl and Gigli, combined with being part of a celebrity romance with Jennifer Lopez. And the vague feeling that he probably didn't really write Good Will Hunting, for which he shared an Oscar with Matt Damon (who didn't get tarnished with the same brush). In any event, I've always thought Affleck was a decent actor, and he makes a decent directorial debut with Gone Baby Gone, a thriller set in Boston's mean streets.

Based on a novel by Dennis Lehane, who also wrote the source material for Clint Eastwood's Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone doesn't have the magisterial sweep on that picture, but it has its moments of effective crime-drama angst.

The story surrounds a missing child, a four-year-old girl who vanishes from the home of her mother, who is memorably played by Amy Ryan. The police are on it, especially the captain in charge of a unit assigned to crimes against children, played with typical gravitas by Morgan Freeman. The girl's aunt, though, Amy Madigan, hires a pair of private detectives, Casey Affleck and Michelle Monaghan, who are also a romantic couple, to augment the investigation. After some initial hesitation, they take the case and work in close proximity with two detectives, Ed Harris and John Ashton. Casey Affleck, as Patrick Kenzie, has the advantage of being from the neighborhood, and goes to the seedy bars and back alleys to interview the skels he grew up. Soon he has a lead which takes him to a local drug lord. Predictably, there is a story twist or two.

Ben Affleck's greatest achievement in directing this picture is his making the neighborhood a character. It looms over every shot, whether it's a menacing bar or an abandoned house where a grisly discovery is made. His failure in this film is in tight storytelling, particularly in the script, which he co-wrote with Aaron Stockard. There are clumsy scenes of bald exposition, and some of the characters are underwritten, particularly that of Monaghan as Angie Gennaro. She looks great but seems to have a perpetual scowl on her face, as if she woke up on the wrong side of the movie. One suspects that a reading of the novel would let us in on the dynamics of her relationship with Kenzie, but it's not in the movie.

As for Amy Ryan, she becomes a strong candidate for an Oscar nomination as the mother. She is a foul-mouthed drug addict, and is so vivid in her part that it makes the film's ending ethical question that more pertinent. I would imagine there are going to be several heated exchanges between moviegoers as they walk out of the theater, contemplating the decision they would make if confronted with the dilemma that Casey Affleck faces in the film.

As for Ben's brother Casey, fortunately this bit of nepotism doesn't hurt the film. Admittedly the youth of Casey and Monaghan does give the film a kind of Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew feel, but Casey manages to invest in the part a sound foundation upon which the entire movie must rest. You really can see him thinking during the film's final sequence.

Ben Affleck, who's portrayal of George Reeve in last year's Hollywoodland went a long way in resurrecting a serious acting career, has taken another positive step with this film. It's not a great picture, but a satisfying one.