Post by Return of the Thin Olive Duke on Aug 31, 2016 16:29:34 GMT -5
Gone Baby Gone
Dir. Ben Affleck
Premiered October 19, 2007
Ben Affleck wasn’t in a great place professionally in 2007. Already overshadowed by collaborator and best friend Matt Damon, Affleck’s 2000s were studded with notorious flops and critically-derided disasters, and got more attention for his romantic partners than for his work. I have no idea what the expectations were for his directorial debut, Gone Baby Gone, but I’m sure news of his ambitions behind the camera was viewed with skepticism. After the film came out, though? Let’s just say he had a very different career going forward.
Based on the novel by Dennis Lehane, Gone Baby Gone begins with the disappearance of five-year-old Amanda McCready (Madeline O’Brien) in the tight-knit community of Dorchester in Boston. Upset over the lack of progress by police, the girl’s aunt (Amy Madigan) seeks out private investigators Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro (Casey Affleck and Michelle Monaghan) in the hope that they can find the truth. In their investigations, Kenzie and Gennaro chafe against the police captain in charge of finding lost children (Morgan Freeman), but find an unlikely ally in Remy Bressant (Ed Harris), the iron-willed detective in charge of the case, which exposes mother Helene (Amy Ryan) as a neglectful parent with deeply suspect links to Boston’s underground.
When the investigation is seemingly solved, Kenzie is alerted to another missing child case involving some former suspects in Amanda’s kidnapping, causing Amanda’s case to unravel and threaten Kenzie’s good-natured idealism as he clashes with the cynic Bressant.
Except for his eye for landscapes and passion for his hometown, Gone Baby Gone did not mark Affleck out as a particularly identifiable director. Luckily, he did a damn good job anyway. The film is gorgeous, filling every inch of the screen with an intimate and uncompromising feel for Boston and its people. Affleck’s brother Casey, last seen creeping us out in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, perfectly captures a man who is above the fray but not above the people in it. More than anything, Gone Baby Gone offers a striking moral outlook that is rarely presented in film: that in order to be good, one must uphold the law and work to make a better world.
Signs This Was Made in 2007
The date appears in several places. The working classes of Boston resemble Britain’s chavs. Helene proclaims “it feels like 9/11.” One of Bressant's fellow officers (Michael K. Williams) decries the "CSI effect" by which juries expect an unreasonable amount of forensic evidence to convict.
Additional Notes
Next Time: Rendition
Dir. Ben Affleck
Premiered October 19, 2007
Ben Affleck wasn’t in a great place professionally in 2007. Already overshadowed by collaborator and best friend Matt Damon, Affleck’s 2000s were studded with notorious flops and critically-derided disasters, and got more attention for his romantic partners than for his work. I have no idea what the expectations were for his directorial debut, Gone Baby Gone, but I’m sure news of his ambitions behind the camera was viewed with skepticism. After the film came out, though? Let’s just say he had a very different career going forward.
Based on the novel by Dennis Lehane, Gone Baby Gone begins with the disappearance of five-year-old Amanda McCready (Madeline O’Brien) in the tight-knit community of Dorchester in Boston. Upset over the lack of progress by police, the girl’s aunt (Amy Madigan) seeks out private investigators Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro (Casey Affleck and Michelle Monaghan) in the hope that they can find the truth. In their investigations, Kenzie and Gennaro chafe against the police captain in charge of finding lost children (Morgan Freeman), but find an unlikely ally in Remy Bressant (Ed Harris), the iron-willed detective in charge of the case, which exposes mother Helene (Amy Ryan) as a neglectful parent with deeply suspect links to Boston’s underground.
When the investigation is seemingly solved, Kenzie is alerted to another missing child case involving some former suspects in Amanda’s kidnapping, causing Amanda’s case to unravel and threaten Kenzie’s good-natured idealism as he clashes with the cynic Bressant.
Except for his eye for landscapes and passion for his hometown, Gone Baby Gone did not mark Affleck out as a particularly identifiable director. Luckily, he did a damn good job anyway. The film is gorgeous, filling every inch of the screen with an intimate and uncompromising feel for Boston and its people. Affleck’s brother Casey, last seen creeping us out in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, perfectly captures a man who is above the fray but not above the people in it. More than anything, Gone Baby Gone offers a striking moral outlook that is rarely presented in film: that in order to be good, one must uphold the law and work to make a better world.
Signs This Was Made in 2007
The date appears in several places. The working classes of Boston resemble Britain’s chavs. Helene proclaims “it feels like 9/11.” One of Bressant's fellow officers (Michael K. Williams) decries the "CSI effect" by which juries expect an unreasonable amount of forensic evidence to convict.
Additional Notes
- My word, Gone Baby Gone doesn’t dispell any stereotypes about Boston. Literally every civilian besides Kenzie and Gennaro is presented as a boorish, loudmouthed, provincial, violent racist.
- Curiously, Gone Baby Gone is not the first of Dennis Lehane’s Kenzie-Gennaro mystery novels, but the fourth; no other books in the series have been adapted. Affleck and Lehane (whose work proved exceptionally popular for adaptation in 2000s Hollywood) have teamed up again, however, to make 2017’s Live by Night, another adaptation that is one– and not the first– of a series.
- Does anyone else see this title and immediately think of the Violent Femmes?
Next Time: Rendition