Directed by Ben Affleck
Screenplay by Ben Affleck and Aaron Stockard

Cast
Casey Affleck as Patrick Kenzie
Michelle Monaghan as Angie Gennaro
Morgan Freeman as Jack Doyle
Ed Harris as Detective Remy Bressant
John Ashton as Nick Poole

Rated R for violence, drug content and pervasive language

I'd rather not go to Boston right now.  It's got nothing to do with the Red Sox World Championship or the coming winter, but the fact that Gone Baby Gone, the directorial debut of Local Kid Made Good Ben Affleck, makes Beantown look like one of Dante's Circles of Hell.  Gut-wrenching almost beyond emotional endurance, this adaptation of Dennis Lehane's novel proves that even as a Really Big Celebrity, Affleck's Oscar-winning screenwriting chops remain intact.  It also demonstrates that he's a gifted director with a great eye for gritty local color, and that his little brother Casey is one hell of an actor.

Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) and Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan) have a nice life, both as a couple and as partners in a modest Missing Persons Detective Agency.  The “Missing Persons” in question tend to be the kind who're only missing from their creditors, but one day something bigger turns up on their doorstep.  Little Amanda McCready (Madeline O'Brien) has vanished from her home, and while her drug addicted mother Helene (Amy Ryan) doesn't seem to care and grandfather Lionel (Titus Welliver) wants to tread lightly, grandmother Beatrice (Amy Madigan) has left no stone unturned.  She's called the cops, whipped up a media firestorm and now comes to Patrick and Angie in hopes that they'll use local contacts to “augment the investigation”.  Angie doesn't want to take the job, fearful of treading into such heartbreaking waters, but Patrick convinces her and the investigation is on.  They work in combative lock-step with the officers on the case, Remy Bressant (Ed Harris) and Nick Poole (John Ashton), while their superior, Jack Doyle (Morgan Freeman) brings his own special obsession with this sort of case.  It quickly becomes apparent that Helene knew all the wrong people, and bodies begin to pile up as the investigators get closer to the truth.  But once they find it, can any of them endure the choices they'll be forced to make?

I know I couldn't:  the third act of Gone Baby Gone gives new meaning to Aaron Sorkin's famous “You can't handle the truth” catchphrase.  Without resorting to anything particularly tawdry or sensationalized, Lehane's story presents its' characters with a simple, choice between alternatives, neither of which is right enough to be the clear choice, and both of which are too wrong to want to accept.  But it has to be one or the other, and even through to the final shot it's not clear what should have been done.  It's a great tragic story, a “be careful what you wish for” cautionary tale that makes me really glad not to have a direct say in how other people raise their kids.

The acting is top-shelf.  Sure, you already knew you'd get great work from Freeman, Harris and Madigan, and that Monaghan would once again display her gift for seeming too good of a person for the world in which she finds herself.  But the cast shines from top to bottom.  Let's start with Casey Affleck.  When I've seen him over the years, it's been mostly in small or comic roles (most people probably know him best for the Ocean's... movies, in which he's been reliably funny).  But I had no idea he had this kind of dramatic depth in him.  Patrick is a character with little or no real baggage when the story starts, just enough street smarts to maneuver the dark corners of a dark town, but as the story unfolds he becomes more and more worn by what he's witnessed and it's all there on his face.  There are two key moments when he could turn back, but once he's passed them both, there's nothing a good man can do but let things play out... and first make that awful choice, and then live with the consequences.  It's a great role and a performance to match.  His career will likely never be the same:  he owes his brother one hell of a nice Christmas present this year.  I'd also seen very little of Amy Ryan, but her work as the sleazy, druggy Helene is a revelation.  So much of the plot hinges on how much we're willing to accept because “she IS her mother...”, and while there've been much meaner and more ruinous movie Moms, I can't think of another one more purely unworthy.  It's a great naturalistic performance, but the movie is full of them.  Actors like Mark Margolis, Trudi Goodman and Matthew Maher do such sensational jobs inhabiting the soulless scumbags they're given to play that it feels like we're not watching acting at all, just a bunch of lowlifes Affleck scraped up off the sidewalk on his way to Fenway Park.

The atmosphere the first-time director sets is flawless.  Most movies would seem like they're coddling their stars when other characters keep telling Patrick and Angie (and not as compliments) that they're young and pretty, but Affleck's Boston is a place where you wouldn't expect to see anyone you'd even consider dating, so their presence does kinda beg for explanation.  Patrick goes on and on in opening narration about how Bostonians are proud of their city and the fact that where they live was chosen for them, but for the life of me I can't imagine why anyone in this movie who could get out wouldn't have done it already.  Trading in famed co-Oscar winner Matt Damon for friend and debuting writer Aaron Stockard, Affleck once again shows that he knows how to put characters and dialog together.  I'm sure Lehane (who also wrote the novel upon which Mystic River was based) gets a lot of credit, but like Good Will Hunting, the movie crackles with first-rate lines.  It also has a special Affleck-sharpened ax to take to the media, whose coverage of the film's events is savagely mercenary and also unfortunately realistic.

So, you might read all this praise and ask, why only three-and-a-half stars?  Well, I freely admit that Gone Baby Gone is a great movie, and I'm really glad I saw it, but I also have to say that it left me not with the buzz of having just witnessed great artful tragedy (as the aforementioned Mystic River did) but a little down, like I'd just watched a bunch of lives ruined for no good reason.  Gone Baby Gone makes no real points, only raises troubling questions (and they ARE troubling).  Was I glad to have borrowed that trouble by seeing the movie.  Well, yeah... kinda.