Reviews Don’t Quite Tell The Story Of “Gone Baby Gone”

On general principle, I would surmise that a movie like "Gone Baby Gone" that boasts Morgan Freeman and Casie Affleck would likely be assured of more success by using Freeman moreso than Affleck. So when I found out that not only was Casey Affleck the lead actor, but his brother Ben was the director and co-writer, I was pretty sure this was going to be a stinker … something along the lines of “Gigli” meets “Good Will Hunting.” That’s why I was somewhat surprised at the positive vibes that the flick generated, bolstered by a rave review from Rolling Stone and a good one from the New York Post. The favorable criticism was punctuated by an Oscar nomination for Amy Ryan, who portrayed Helene McCready, the drug-addled mother of a kidnapped four-year-old girl. And since Dennis Lehane has become one of my favorite writers, and since it was his book that inspired the film, I was intrigued enough to check it out.

The immediate impression for me was that Affleck was pretty good, but it was rather unbelievable to view him as a tough-guy private detective named Patrick Kenzie, and his relationship with his girlfriend, Michelle Monaghan, was awkward at best. Kenzie is tasked with helping to find McCready’s daughter by using contacts from every level of society that he has made in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston. Freeman is always great, but he was only spottily used in the movie, and Ed Harris’s character was very good as well.

However, this was one of those flicks that tried to be about four different movies in one. It seemed like it was ending after less than an hour, but a few unforeseen plot twists allowed it to play out to nearly two hours. The major plot point (a fake kidnapping, not to give away too much) was not believable and very hard to swallow, and since it was the impetus behind the entire second half of the movie, that lack of credibility brought the movie down quite a bit in my estimation. The film did incorporate some elements of “Se7en” into it (always a good thing), including a variety of difficult moral choices that faced Kenzie throughout.

At the end, in somewhat abrupt and confusing fashion, Kenzie loses his relationship as a ramification of one of his decisions, and the ending scene involves him sitting on a couch, seeing that his decision may have been sort of pointless and seemingly questioning whether he had chosen correctly. The final message is one that we all learn one way or another, at one time or another: people don’t change.

"Gone Baby Gone" had a few bright moments (when Lehan’s involved, you were always assured of a tremendous story), but I was left not quite understanding some of the hubbub surrounding it. The end result is likely to be that the Affleck brothers will be afforded even more cinematic opportunities in Hollywood; I’ll let you decide whether that is a good thing or not.