movie review gone baby gone

Babes in the hood

Casey Affleck proves hes more than just a kid brother in Gone and The Assassination of Jesse James...

Boston seems like the most forbidding city in crime movies. There are lots of movies about criminals in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York and points between, but somehow in Boston the wounds cut deeper, the characters are angrier, their resentments bleed, their grudges never die, and they all know everybody else’s business. The novelist Dennis Lehane captured that dour gloom in his books inspiring “ Mystic River ” and now “Gone Baby Gone.” What would it take to make his characters happy?

This is his fourth story involving Patrick Kenzie ( Casey Affleck ) and Angie Gennaro ( Michelle Monaghan ), lovers and business partners, who are private investigators specializing in tracking down deadbeats. Approached by clients who have deadly matters on their mind, Patrick and Angie protest that they’re just garden-variety PIs, don’t carry guns, aren’t looking for heavy lifting. Then somehow they end up with crucifixion murders, kidnapped babies and, as always, people who are not who, or what, they seem.

This could become a franchise, if we didn’t start grinning at their claims to be basically amateurs. In “Gone Baby Gone,” Ben Affleck , making his debut as a director, assumes we haven’t read the four novels, approaches Patrick and Angie head on and surrounds them with a gallery of very, very intriguing characters. He has his brother Casey and Monaghan play babes in the deep, dark woods, their youth and inexperience working for them as they wonder about what veteran cops don’t question. The result is a superior police procedural, and something more — a study in devious human nature.

I know, the title sounds like the movie should star Bill Haley and the Comets. But there is a rough authenticity from the first shots, especially when we meet a woman named Bea McCready ( Amy Madigan ) and her husband Lionel ( Titus Welliver ), who don’t think the cops are doing enough to track down her 4-year-old niece. They think people who know the neighborhood and don’t wear badges might find out more. They’re right.

The police investigation is being led by Jack Doyle ( Morgan Freeman ) of the Crimes Against Children police task force, who unlike a standard movie cop, doesn’t resent these outsiders but suggests they work with his men Remy Bressant ( Ed Harris ) and Nick Poole ( John Ashton ). Not likely, but good for the story, as the trail begins in the wreckage of a life being lived by the little girl’s single mother, Helene ( Amy Ryan ). She is deep into drugs, which she takes whenever she can sober up enough, and there seems to be a connection between her supplier and a recent heist of a pile of drug money.

Enough about the plot. What I like about the movie is the way Ben Affleck and his brother, both lifelong Bostonians, understand the rhythm of a society in which people not only live in one another’s pockets but are trying to slash their way out. This movie and the recent “ The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford ” announce Casey’s maturation as an actor, and it also proves, after her film “The Heartbreak Kid,” (2007) that Michelle Monaghan should not be blamed for the sins of others. And when you assemble Morgan Freeman, Ed Harris, Amy Madigan and Amy Ryan as sidemen, the star soloists can go out for a cigarette, and the show goes right on. One reason crime movies tend to be intrinsically interesting is that the supporting characters have to be riveting. How far would Jason Bourne get in a one-man show?

There are some secrets and concealed motives in “Gone Baby Gone,” but there always are, in any crime movie without nametags saying Good Guy and Bad Guy. What distinguishes the screenplay by Ben Affleck and Aaron Stockard , which departs from the novel in several ways, is (a) how well-concealed the secrets are, and (b) how much perfect sense they make when they’re revealed. I am grateful when a movie springs something on me, and I feel rewarded, not tricked.

I also like the way that certain clues are planted in plain view. We can see or hear them just fine. It’s that we don’t know they’re clues. No glowering closeups or characters skulking in a corner to give the game away. That’s a tribute to the writing — and the acting, which doesn’t telegraph anything. Actors talk about how well they like to get to know their characters. Sometimes it’s better if they take them at face value and find out more about them along with the rest of us.

There are dark regions below the surface of the story. Was the child taken by a pedophile? There’s a suspect, all right, but maybe he’s too obvious. Certainly Helene, the mother, is no help. She’s so battered by drugs and drink that she’s hardly quite sure if a conversation is taking place. It’s amazing the little girl made it to 4; her aunt and uncle must have had a lot to do with that. The unspoken assumption is that somewhere a clock is ticking, and the longer the child remains missing, the more likely she will never be found or be found dead. And here are these two kids, skip tracers who have lives and destinies depending on them.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

Gone Baby Gone

John Ashton as Nick Poole
Amy Ryan as Helene McCready
Amy Madigan as Bea McCready
Ed Harris as Remy Bressant
Casey Affleck as Patrick Kenzie
Michelle Monaghan as Angie Gennaro
Morgan Freeman as Jack Doyle
Titus Welliver as Lionel McCready
Aaron Stockard

Directed by

Ben Affleck

Based on the novel by

Dennis Lehane

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Movie Review | 'Gone Baby Gone'

Human Frailty and Pain on Boston’s Mean Streets

By Manohla Dargis

Oct. 19, 2007

For his first time behind the camera as a director, the actor Ben Affleck has chosen a brooding, serious drama about missing children, wayward parents and idealism lost and regained. “Gone Baby Gone” is based on the novel by Dennis Lehane, who wrote the similarly themed “Mystic River,” which Clint Eastwood turned into a modern classic. If Mr. Affleck hasn’t raised his material to that rarefied level, he has taken a satisfyingly tough look into conscience, to those dark places where some men also go astray.

The story wants to break hearts: 4-year-old Amanda McCready, a blond doll, has disappeared without a trace amid the squalor of her South Boston neighborhood. The cops are out in formation, as are the television news vans, antennas raised high and all but trembling for blood. Staring into the cameras, the neighbors eagerly offer ready-made headlines and self-flattering condolences: they’re coming together, everyone loves Amanda. The days tick past and the child’s anxious aunt, Bea (Amy Madigan), seeks help from a local private investigator, Patrick Kenzie, a squirt who looks as if he just dropped out of college and is played without an ounce of actorly ingratiation by Casey Affleck, the director’s younger brother.

I’m not sure exactly when Casey Affleck became such a good actor. Steven Soderbergh tapped him a few years back for recurring third-banana duties in the “Ocean’s Eleven” films, and Gus Van Sant put him in “Gerry,” his 2002 avant-garde feature, in which Mr. Affleck roamed around a merciless desert landscape with Matt Damon, with whom he took turns playing Beavis and Butt-head, Vladimir and Estragon.

More recently he stole the show from Brad Pitt in the western “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.” One of the unusual things about his performance as Ford was its lack of sentimentality. He didn’t plead the character’s case or remind us of his own humanity; he just played the role.

Most actors want you to love them, but Casey Affleck doesn’t seem to know that, or maybe he doesn’t care. Patrick doesn’t cuddle or kiss up. He takes the job Bea offers despite the reluctance of his live-in girlfriend and partner, Angie (a solid Michelle Monaghan), but he doesn’t look like anyone’s idea of a savior. With his sneakers and jeans and small-man’s swagger, he comes off like one of those toughs who never leave the neighborhood and would sooner swing a bat at your head than at a ball.

Mr. Affleck is already deep into the character right from the start, but neither he nor his director let on all they know about Patrick. There’s something about this guy that needles, that helps keep an already tense story on edge.

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Gone baby gone.

Common Sense Says
Parents Say 3 Reviews
Kids Say 1 Review

Common Sense Media Review

Deeply affecting crime thriller for grownups.

Parents Need to Know

Why Age 17+?

Strong and frequent, including "c--ksucker," "pu--y," jackas

Heavy and brutal, and a sense of menace pervades the film. Guns are trained on p

Viewers don't really see any explicit scenes in which characters shoot up or

Nothing really obvious. Names of some drugs and the occasional store signage.

Some kissing and sexual innuendos, but nothing explicit. Some references to sexu

Any Positive Content?

This is a dark and dreary world, peopled by junkies, neglectful parents, drug de

Strong and frequent, including "c--ksucker," "pu--y," jackass," and the always-popular "f--k."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Violence & Scariness

Heavy and brutal, and a sense of menace pervades the film. Guns are trained on people at point-blank range and fired fairly frequently, killing more than one victim (one scene reveals what happens when someone is shot in the head). Realistic, painful barroom brawls. Crimes are perpetrated against children, who are also severely neglected.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Viewers don't really see any explicit scenes in which characters shoot up or snort drugs, but there's lots of talk about it, including discussion of "bumping rails" (snorting drugs) in bathrooms and doing heroin. Plenty of drinking, especially in dark, seedy bars.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Sex, romance & nudity.

Some kissing and sexual innuendos, but nothing explicit. Some references to sexual acts.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Positive Messages

This is a dark and dreary world, peopled by junkies, neglectful parents, drug dealers, corrupt cops, and morally bankrupt city officials. They lie and hurt to protect themselves and their livelihood, sometimes to the detriment of a child's life.

Parents need to know that this crime thriller (which is Ben Affleck's directorial debut) is so disturbing in spots that it may even make adults flinch. It doesn't shy away from the story's dark elements -- of which a 4-year-old's abduction is just the beginning. There's also neglect, drug use, barroom brawls, gunplay, murder, and plenty of strong language (including "f--k"). That said, older teens and grown ups who do end up seeing it will likely be able to look past the base, repugnant characters and appreciate the leads, who are compassionate and dedicated and fight for justice. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

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Parent and Kid Reviews

Parents say (3)
Kids say (1)

Based on 3 parent reviews

More irritating than enjoyable

What's the story.

Based on Dennis Lehane's novel of the same name, Ben Affleck 's directorial debut GONE BABY GONE stars Affleck's younger brother, Casey , in a subtle-yet-powerful performance as Patrick Kenzie. Patrick is a two-bit detective roped into the big time when he and his partner (business and otherwise), Angie Gennarro ( Michelle Monaghan ), are recruited by a neighbor to help investigate the disappearance of 4-year-old Amanda McCready (Madeline O'Brien). Amanda isn't like many of the kids who unfortunately find themselves plastered on network news when they're abducted; she's from Dorchester, a hardscrabble South Boston community addled by drugs and crime. Her mother, Helene (Amy Ryan, in a stunningly affecting -- and effective -- turn), is a junkie, and her father is nowhere to be found. Victims like Amanda are apt to fall through the proverbial cracks: Already, the cops haven't turned up anything. Despite their misgivings, Patrick and Angie may be the only hope Amanda has, but their choice to get involved -- and stay involved even when answers have already been "found" -- may change them, and their relationship, forever.

Is It Any Good?

An impressive, confidently helmed vehicle that ably mixes grit with heart, Gone Baby Gone lays to rest any impression that Affleck's talent, much-lauded in the Good Will Hunting days, is no more. From the first frame on, Ben Affleck's affection -- and, more important, his respect -- for his native city is palpable; rather than romanticize it, he presents it as is, with the ugliness intact. Much has been made of the lengths he took to be authentic (he shot in Dorchester and cast locals in nearly every scene) and it pays off. The movie thankfully lacks the gloss of many other crime movies, even those that are well done (like Out of Sight , for example). Even the twist ending feels less like a device and more like an essential plot development. Lehane's story is grim, as is the film's palate and tone. It may even outdo another lauded Lehane-inspired film, Mystic River .

The film does take time to find its footing early on, slightly hobbled by too much exposition (this is the drug dealer; here's the possibly corrupt cop; etc.). And Angie's character is sadly lightweight (though Monaghan gives it the old college try). But Gone Baby Gone quickly gets into a groove, thanks in no small part to a stellar cast -- can Morgan Freeman and Ed Harris do wrong? -- and a script, penned by Ben Affleck and Aaron Stockard, that isn't afraid to be ambiguous and complicated. Much like this new incarnation of Affleck himself.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about why people will want to see this movie -- because of the story, or because Ben Affleck directed it? Why do you think some actors choose to go into directing? Which role gives them more power within the media industry, and why? Families can also discuss how the media handles stories about missing people, particularly children. Do you think cases are covered differently based on their circumstances (i.e. a child being kidnapped from a tough, working-class neighborhood instead of a pretty, manicured suburb)? If so, why?

Movie Details

In theaters : October 18, 2007
On DVD or streaming : February 11, 2008
Cast : Casey Affleck , Ed Harris , Morgan Freeman
Director : Ben Affleck
Inclusion Information : Black actors
Studio : Miramax
Genre : Drama
Run time : 114 minutes
MPAA rating : R
MPAA explanation : violence, drug content and pervasive language.
Last updated : March 12, 2024

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The Movie Review: 'Gone Baby Gone'

G one Baby Gone begins, simply--if horribly--enough with the taking of a little girl. Four-year-old Amanda McCready is plucked from her bed in Boston's working-class Dorchester neighborhood one night while her mother, Helene (Amy Ryan), is apparently at a neighbor's house watching television. The police undertake a massive hunt for Amanda, but their efforts are not enough for the little girl's aunt (Amy Madigan), who seeks out private eyes Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) and Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan) to help with the investigation. "Do you know people in the neighborhood who don't talk to the police?" she asks Kenzie. "Yeah, one or two," he answers.

When Kenzie starts talking to these people, he learns that Helene was not, in fact, at a neighbor's when her little girl was snatched. She was doing coke in the bathroom of a local dive with her heel of a boyfriend. Indeed, Amanda may have been taken by people who know Helene and want something from her. Convolutions begin to unfurl: Was Amanda abducted by a drug dealer known as "Cheese"? What might her family really know about the kidnapping? And the central question, running through the film like a vein: Is Amanda alive or dead?

Gone Baby Gone is famously directed by the (for now) more famous Affleck brother, Ben. It's his first effort behind the lens since a satirical short he made in college entitled I Killed My Lesbian Wife, Hung Her on a Meat Hook, and Now I Have a Three-Picture Deal at Disney , and his inexperience shows in a variety of ways. His visual eye is underdeveloped, for instance, and his storytelling lags now and then, especially during an awkward voiceover which connects the film's first and second acts. Yet, miraculously enough, Affleck's strengths as a director far outweigh his weaknesses. Gone Baby Gone is a thoughtful, serious film, whose strong moral undercurrents carry it beyond mere genre.

The movie's first real surprise is its backdrop of white urban poverty and pathology. It's a reality we rarely see on the big screen, where portraits of community dysfunction are carefully segregated into dark-skinned, inner-city gangstas and rural white trash. Affleck descends into caricature on occasion (in particular, when Kenzie and Gennaro enter a dingy bar and encounter what appears to be the cast of Deliverance ) and the squawking Boston accents sometimes overshoot the mark. But, for the most part, Affleck convincingly captures the diminished dreams and dark suspicions of the city's white underclass, some of whom are barely making it--for instance, Amanda's ex-con, ex-alcoholic uncle (Titus Welliver)--and some of whom are not making it at all.

Amanda's mother, Helene, is in the latter category. Rude, stupid, and flawless in her self-absorption, she is one of the more repellant figures to appear onscreen this year, a walking manifesto for why some people shouldn't be allowed to raise children. This is a woman whose eagerness to locate her stolen daughter is frequently displaced by her eagerness to locate a fresh six-pack. Yet if the film portrays her without pity, it also does so without contempt. Even as his partner, Gennaro, voices her (and the audience's) disgust with this maternal monster, Kenzie, the movie's unlikely conscience, treats her with a certain protectiveness. He never says "There but for the grace of God ...," but nearly everything in his manner conveys it. These are his people, warts and all.

Casey Affleck is an odd choice to play the street-smart Kenzie: The Dorchester his brother has conjured up looks as though it would have scrubbed the boyishness from Casey's face by the time he hit his mid-teens. But, while his performance isn't as indelible as his turn in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford , it's more than capable. His Kenzie is a quiet, thoughtful young man, whose outsized sense of moral probity, gradually revealed, never quite crosses over into overt judgmentalism.

The rest of the cast is comparably strong. Monaghan, who had terribly underwritten parts in M:i:III and The Heartbreak Kid following her breakthrough in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang , gets a little more to do as Kenzie's professional and romantic partner, though still not nearly enough. Morgan Freeman displays his typical avuncular genius as the head of a police unit specializing in crimes against children, and Ed Harris is fierce yet subtle as the cop with whom Kenzie and Gennaro work most closely. Just as important, Affleck the Elder gets strong, persuasive performances from supporting players such as Madigan, Welliver, and (especially) Ryan.

As with so many detective tales of the hard-boiled Chandler school, Gone Baby Gone , based on the novel by Dennis Lehane, is an overly complicated journey to a somewhat dubious destination. In Mystic River (also based on a Lehane novel), the disparate narrative threads were made to align thanks to the inclusion of a purely irrational character, a psycho ex machina ; in Gone Baby Gone , a conspiracy of untrammeled unlikelihood fulfills the same purpose. Yet even as the script--which Affleck co-wrote with longtime friend Aaron Stockard--stumbles now and then in terms of narrative logic, it carefully sets in place the elements of a genuine moral quandary, one from which Affleck does not shy away.

Though Gone Baby Gone shares with Mystic River the usual Lehanian touches--the Dorchester setting, the hard-bitten cops, the imperiled children--in the end, the Clint Eastwood movie it resembles most closely is Million Dollar Baby , another film that concludes with a ruthless ethical dilemma. But where Eastwood meticulously stacked the deck to cast Frankie Dunn's ultimate decision in the most flattering light possible, Affleck bravely does the reverse, conditioning the audience to anticipate one outcome and then offering another far less tidy. This is a film in which the difficult choices truly are difficult, and a solution that makes a problem seem to go away is not necessarily the right solution. In its way, Gone Baby Gone is an argument for obligation over accommodation, the absolute over the contingent. But it's also an implicit defense of people like the downscale denizens of Dorchester, wretched and irresponsible though they might sometimes be, from the easy biases of those with better, more comfortable lives. I found the conclusion of the film deeply morally unsatisfying, as I suspect most viewers will. But that, I think, is exactly the point.

This post originally appeared at TNR.com.

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Gone Baby Gone Reviews

As it goes from a classic detective story to a moral fable, the movie gains intensity. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Dec 27, 2023

Baby’s Beantown mystery benefits from Ben Affleck proving he’s a decent director with a knack for nailing the local Boston color of Dennis Lehane’s book. Then it comes time to wrap things up and splat.

Full Review | Sep 8, 2023

An affecting morality play that leaves us pondering the movie for days.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Apr 2, 2023

What it lacks in catharsis it makes up for in gritty realism and tense moral struggles.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Nov 24, 2020

The denizens of the Affleck brothers' furious adaptation of Dennis Lehane's excursion into the lower depths of Boston's Southie Irish hood are loud, uncouth, hyperviolent and endlessly fascinating.

Full Review | May 26, 2020

With a superlative cast and a hauntingly riveting story, Gone Baby Gone is one film that won't be gone from our hearts or minds for a long time.

Full Review | Nov 7, 2019

This is a film that isn't afraid to tackle a moral dilemma with great conviction. Here's hoping that Ben Affleck can continue to build on his current momentum.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Oct 29, 2019

Ben Affleck has proven himself to be a skilled director, here's hoping this is a harbinger of great things to come.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 6, 2019

It's a P.I. movie with the feel of an indie drama, set in the working class neighborhoods of Boston and filled with characters that feel like they've lived on the streets all their lives ...

Full Review | Jul 1, 2017

An out-and-out triumph for the Brothers Affleck.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 5, 2015

This is A-grade stuff: well-plotted, unpredictable and grounded in reality from start to finish.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 14, 2012

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 18, 2011

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 17, 2011

As an actor, Ben Affleck might be a supporting player trapped in a leading man's body, but as a filmmaker he's an auspicious talent.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 14, 2011

A truly stellar directorial debut by Ben Affleck.

Full Review | Apr 5, 2011

Because it mostly succeeds, now that [Affleck's] got this and that good under-seen performance in Hollywoodland under his belt, he can hold his head high again.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Apr 4, 2011

A tense meditation on morality in the modern world, Gone Baby Gone is a superb crime thriller featuring a star performance from Casey Affleck. If crime drama is your thing, it really doesn't get much better than this.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Mar 22, 2011

The Affleck boys finally earn their stripes as cinematic artists

Full Review | Aug 27, 2009

Gone Baby Gone is an argument for obligation over accommodation, the absolute over the contingent.

Full Review | Sep 18, 2008

Affleck proved that his Good Will Hunting moment wasn't an aberration, and he also showed that he didn't need Matt Damon in tow to make a great movie.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Aug 18, 2008

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Gone baby gone.

The plot of Ben Affleck's directorial debut -- a story of loss from the the author of "Mystic River" -- is complicated and loaded with twists, but Affleck and co-screenwriter Aaron Stockard do a fine job of keeping the action lucid and with a good deal of mordant humor.

By Stephen Farber , The Associated Press September 4, 2007 9:00pm

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This review was written for the theatrical release of “Gone Baby Gone.”

Ben Affleck seemed like a promising young actor when he starred in “Chasing Amy” a decade ago. A year later, he and Matt Damon won an Oscar for their screenplay for “Good Will Hunting.” But since then, Affleck has been better known for his offscreen romances than for his screen performances, which have been pretty universally derided.

The Bottom Line Empty

So a lot of people will be surprised by his directorial debut, “Gone Baby Gone,” though if you caught the glint of intelligence he showed in such movies as “Going All the Way” and “Boiler Room,” his achievement here might seem less startling.

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Eye For Film >> Movies >> Gone Baby Gone (2007) Film Review

Gone Baby Gone

Reviewed by: The Exile

Despite strong turns in last year’s Hollywoodland and 2002’s Changing Lanes , Ben Affleck has never quite caught fire as an actor. While best pal and fellow Oscar-winner Matt Damon has soared on the shoulders of Jason Bourne, Affleck has limped through dreck like the aptly-named Paycheck with head bowed and hand out. Engaging in a brief frottage - both personal and professional - with Jennifer Lopez did not help.

That said, Affleck’s sideways slide into directing is a very smart move. In Gone Baby Gone, he transposes Dennis Lehane’s searing novel about child abduction to the big screen without sacrificing either its dark mood or moral ambivalence. The fourth book in a series about a pair of South Boston private eyes, Gone Baby Gone is remarkable not just for its hot-button subject but its conflicted tone; by the end, you’ll be every bit as conflicted.

That tone is carefully preserved by Affleck and his co-screenwriter Aaron Stockard, not least in the voice of Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck), a private investigator who grew up in the rough Dorchester neighborhood where he still lives. “I find the people who started in the cracks and then fell through,” he says in voiceover at the beginning of the film, an educated man who started in those very same cracks. Along with his business and romantic partner Angie Genarro (Michelle Monaghan), Patrick has become skillful at tracking down those whom the cops ignore.

The disappearance of four-year-old Amanda McCready is not Patrick’s kind of case: too much media, too many cops and too great a chance of a grisly outcome. But when Amanda’s distraught aunt and uncle (Amy Madigan and Titus Welliver) come begging, he reluctantly accepts; and as he and Angie delve deeper into the case - and into the life of Amanda’s drug-and-booze-happy mother (the brilliant Amy Ryan) - the clues come to light with suspicious ease. So when, just one hour into the movie, the little girl’s disappearance seems to be solved, Patrick is haunted by facts that don’t add up. Against his better judgment, he keeps looking.

Filmed in the streets and bars of Boston, Gone Baby Gone has a dense authenticity which, like the Brooklyn of We Own the Night , crackles with the grit of decades of fossil fuels and crumbling concrete. Whether capturing gnarled hands wrapped around shot glasses or junk food littering a family table, Braveheart cinematographer John Toll is astoundingly particular. His images anchor a story that seems at times frustratingly elusive.

As for Affleck Jr, he may have benefited from nepotism but he earns this role every time he opens his mouth. Born and raised in Falmouth, Massachusetts, he slips into the accent with ease; though boyish and disturbingly slight for such a violent movie, he gives Patrick flashes of foul-mouthed temper that catch his opponents off-guard. And while Monaghan’s work is less showy - and her character less defined - she nevertheless uses her marvelous eyes to convey emotions that aren’t even in the book, never mind the script.

Filled with blurred motives and slippery characters, Gone Baby Gone doesn’t just ask what it means to do the right thing: it wonders if, in certain situations, we even know what the right thing is.

Gone Baby Gone Review

06 Jun 2008

114 minutes

Gone Baby Gone

Crime novelist Dennis Lehane (who has also written episodes of The Wire) is known for the acute sense of place and mood of desolation he evokes in writing of working-class Boston, specifically the tough Dorchester area where he has lived all his life. Clint Eastwood’s masterful Mystic River captured Lehane’s world with operatic intensity. With the bleak but fascinating Gone Baby Gone - adapted, in some scenes almost verbatim, from the fourth of Lehane’s books about private investigator partners Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) and Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan) - director Ben Affleck has taken a thoughtfully subdued approach to what is, it seems, his favourite novel. He sustains a concrete, authentic realism in what is, after all, his own hometown setting.

It’s a major directorial debut from Affleck, successfully combining the elements of a smart, intriguing police procedural with a distinctive Bostonian flavour and the psychological sophistication and moral complexity that distinguish the very best mystery thrillers. It also marks a stunning reversal of reputation for the man, whose credibility plunged from Academy Award-winning screenwriter (for Good Will Hunting) and Hollywood young lion through ignominies like his performance in daffy Armageddon and the full-time job of celebrity coupledom, obsessively paparazzi-chronicled, of the Bennifer years. A climb back to creative respect that began with his almost grudgingly praised performance in Hollywoodland is well and truly complete. Ben Affleck is no fool, and that’s official.

The plot is labyrinthine and on close inspection depends on some perhaps improbable clumsy mistakes, coincidences and convergences (although everyone in this claustrophobic ’hood plausibly has a shared past). But Affleck and co-writer Aaron Stockard (another of the tight Beantown buddies with whom the Afflecks and Matt Damon grew up) lay it out beautifully, coherently and heartbreakingly.

Unsurprisingly, all is not what it seems and people are devious, deceiving keepers of secrets and lies. The little girl may indeed have been snatched by a known serial paedophile, who the police quickly identify and pin for the outrage. But the child’s pathetic, spotlight-basking mother, Helene (Amy Ryan), is strangely, obnoxiously unhelpful and obviously knows more than she’s saying. Oscar nominee Ryan’s brilliantly observed, breathtakingly trashy character is a foul-mouthed boozer, user and generally skanky ho. Like Monaghan’s disapproving Angie, we are tempted to feel that wherever little Amanda is, unless it’s at the bottom of a quarry, she may be better off, and that her abductor or abductors, unless he, she or they are sexually deviant, may have simply beaten social services to the child’s rescue. Then there are the child’s aunt and uncle (Amy Madigan and Titus Welliver), apparently the only people in the world who gave a damn about Amanda before her disappearance, who begin to look shifty, too.

There is no shortage of potential suspects in the local criminal confraternity either, whose grievances, grudges and possible motives for revenge add strong undercurrents of suspicion. The police in the frame - Morgan Freeman’s respected, formidable Captain Jack Doyle, who has a strong personal motive to solve the case, and his dodgier lead detectives, Cajun hard man Remy Bressant (Ed Harris giving expert intimidation and inscrutability) and bullish sidekick Nick Poole (John Ashton) - have their agendas and are clearly working at resentful, patronising odds with Patrick, even when he demonstrates to them he knows what he’s about. Or, at least, naively thinks he does.

Patrick and Angie are young, which immediately ups the stakes and personal jeopardy for them. There are running comments on Patrick’s boyishness (like baby-faced Casey, he looks much younger than he is), which exacerbates the policemen’s hostility and disdain. And while the duo of seemingly amateurish sleuths are part of the neighbourhood fabric, at ease with the roughnecks and lowlifes, compared to most of the characters who surround them they are positively innocent. They don’t carry guns, and they seem happy and comfortable enough with their unambitious business tracking down missing people who are usually debtors and deadbeat dads. Patrick lives and works by a somewhat romantic gumshoe code of honour that gives him a certainty about what is just and right. Inevitably this mentality is going to doom him to a whole lot of heart-sick, soul-searching dismay when he finds himself looking at a palette of shades of grey. It is the more intuitive Angie who foresees what an unhappy outcome to the mysterious case of Amanda could do to them, both professionally and personally. She knows they are unprepared to swim in darker waters, and she is proven horribly right when they find themselves neck-deep in duplicity, murder, sociopathic drug dealers, horrific paedophiles, enigmatic cops and puzzles that can have no satisfactory solutions.

Some way into the film a nerve-shattering plot resolution seems to have been reached, but there is more to come. Clues and telling slips of the tongue are there for the alert, but the revelations that emerge, one after another, take us to disturbing places we could never expect.

In keeping with director Affleck’s reflective tone, his chief protagonist - another superlative turn from Casey Affleck, ensuring that he will never again be thought of as just ‘the kid brother’ - maintains an outer calm quietude, visibly and vocally holding Patrick’s churning emotions in check and putting over a mostly easy, relaxed-looking demeanour while microscopically suggesting Kenzie’s sharpness and overwhelming inner turmoil. Having come into his own with his Academy Award-nominated performance in The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, Affleck-the-younger proves it was no fluke in this flawless turn. Even in the seasoned company of Freeman, Harris and Madigan he commands the centre, in a drama that is compelling and demanding from start to finish. Pay attention to his opening voiceover, which is key to understanding why Patrick makes the difficult decision he has to live with at the end of the story.

Gone Baby Gone’s UK release was postponed from its original September 2007 scheduling over fears of causing offence or distress with its inevitable reminders of the Madeleine McCann case (the child actress in the film, whose name happens to be Madeline O’Brien, does resemble Maddy). But that tragedy shouldn’t be used to overshadow this completely unrelated story, superbly and thought-provokingly told.

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DVD & Streaming

Gone Baby Gone

Content caution.

In Theaters

Casey Affleck as Patrick Kenzie; Michelle Monaghan as Angie Gennaro; Morgan Freeman as Jack Doyle; Ed Harris as Remy Broussard; Amy Ryan as Helene McCready; John Ashton as Nick Poole

Home Release Date

Ben Affleck

Distributor

Miramax Films

Movie Review

Cataclysm can begin without a sound.

That’s the way it was with Amanda McCready, who vanished from her bed one night while her mother was away. The 4-year-old disappeared, as if she’d never been.

Her disappearance sparks a citywide obsession. The front of McCready’s Boston home is a circus, filled with policemen and camera crews. And, as Amanda’s mom looks on mournfully, her aunt sends a message to Amanda’s kidnappers: We won’t press charges—just give her back.

Police Chief Jack Doyle says he won’t rest until he saves her. But for Amanda’s aunt, it’s not enough. She hires two young private investigators, Patrick Kenzie and his girlfriend, Angie Gennaro, who know the McCready neighborhood and may be able to find people who won’t talk with the cops.

What they find is a dark, disturbing world. They discover that Amanda’s mother, Helene, wasn’t at a neighbor’s when Amanda disappeared, as she claimed, but snorting cocaine at a local dive. She’s a drug runner, too, and Amanda’s disappearance starts to look like retribution for a deal gone wrong.

As the case twists and turns, Patrick and Angie grow more and more involved with the case. They must find Amanda—no matter the cost.

Positive Elements

Gone Baby Gone is loaded with characters with the best of intentions. The road through this film is, in fact, paved with them.

Patrick is a tough, foul-mouthed guy raised on the mean streets, and he makes plenty of mistakes throughout the story. But he has an iron will and a strong (if sometimes warped) sense of justice. He stares down drug dealers and defends the honor of his girlfriend (albeit by coldcocking a guy propositioning her). And Patrick will do whatever he can to reunite Amanda with her mother.

Angie, meanwhile, only has eyes for the child’s well-being. When it appears that Amanda was thrown in a lake, Angie plunges in after her—a dive of 50 feet or so—injuring herself in the process.

Nearly every major character, it seems, has Amanda’s best interests at heart. Her aunt zealously searches for her. Det. Remy Broussard tells Patrick how much he loves children. Jack Doyle may want to save the girl more than anyone: His own daughter was kidnapped and killed years before.

“My little girl likely died crying out for me to save her,” he tells Patrick. “And I never did.”

Helene, meanwhile, appears almost indifferent to Amanda’s fate early on. But about midway through the search she comes to a greater awareness that this little girl—her little girl—is in grave danger, and we watch as Helene’s heart begins to break bit by bit.

Spiritual Elements

The spiritual groundwork for Gone Baby Gone is laid out at the very beginning, with Patrick solemnly reciting Matthew 10:16:

“Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: Be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.”

The movie is, in some ways, a morality tale—but one in which traditional choices of what’s right and wrong are turned on their heads. Its moral quandaries seem intended to force us to probe our traditional, largely Christian values.

Points are driven home through constant visual touchstones. Many characters wear crosses around their necks. Catholic icons of Jesus and Mary are seen in houses. After Angie gets injured trying to save Amanda, she stares at a cross on the wall of her hospital room. And when a detective dies in a shootout, he’s buried in a Russian Orthodox ceremony.

[ Spoiler Warning ] One heartbreaking bit of religious imagery is a medallion of St. Christopher, who in Catholic lore is said to have carried the Christ child across a river. An abducted and presumed dead 7-year-old boy was last seen wearing the medallion around his neck; Patrick later sees the medallion slung around the wrist of a convicted pedophile.

Patrick kills the pedophile, execution style, after seeing the body of the boy. Det. Broussard congratulates Patrick on a job well done, but Patrick responds by saying that shame is God’s way of telling him he’s done something wrong—and he’s filled with shame.

“Murder is a sin,” he tells Broussard. “Depends on who you do it to,” Broussard says. “That’s not how it works,” Patrick says. “It is what it is.”

Sexual & Romantic Content

[ Spoiler Warning ] The pedophile took the boy in order to keep him as a sex slave. When Patrick bursts in on the man, he’s cowering in a corner, saying, “It was an accident.” We never see more than a glimpse of the boy’s dead face as he lies in a bathtub, but we do see his bloody underwear soaking in a sink, a soul-piercing image that leaves us to imagine in horror what the “accident” might have involved.

Thus, while sex is never suggested as a motivation for Amanda’s kidnapping, sexual themes form a steady undercurrent here.

Patrick remembers Helene from high school because she was apparently having sex with a schoolmate. When he mentions the high school connection to Helene, they joke that her old boyfriend became a “fag.” During an expletive-filled confrontation at a bar, a patron makes a couple of crude come-ons to Angie. A drug dealer named Cheese also forces Angie to lift up her shirt (revealing a black bra) to prove she hasn’t been wired by police. A woman in a skimpy halter top hovers around Cheese for part of the interview.

Violent Content

Detectives partake in a bloody shootout at the house of the pedophile and his two associates: One detective gets shot in the neck, and blood pours through his fingers as he tries to hold the wound shut. When the detective goes down, Patrick storms the house and finds one of the owners facedown in the living room, apparently dead. He’s chased through the house by a gun-wielding woman and stumbles upon the pedophile and the corpse of the child. He vomits.

The next thing moviegoers see is the pedophile on his knees, staring at the floor, a gun pointed at the back of his head. Patrick fires the weapon and blood sprays.

There’s also an intentionally confusing gunfight at a quarry reservoir in which at least one, possibly two people are killed. A masked man points a gun at Amanda’s Uncle Lionel at a bar. He’s gunned down by the bartender. And he dies slowly.

Patrick and Angie run into problems at another bar. Patrons lock the two in before Patrick flashes a gun—encouraging them to unlock the door. On the way out, a patron propositions Angie, and Patrick punches him in the face, knocking him to the ground.

Detectives find Helene’s boyfriend dead—covered in blood and tied to a chair. Later, we learn the boyfriend was beaten with a pipe and shot in the chest.

Crude or Profane Language

At least 125 f-words. About 20 s-words. Armfuls of milder expletives include “a–,” “b–ch” and “d–n.” God’s and Jesus’ names are misused a half-dozen or so times each.

Drug & Alcohol Content

Helene is no June Cleaver. She goes to the bar almost every day and, according to Lionel, uses cocaine about three times a week. Bar regulars say she often brought Amanda with her, too. Helene confesses she’s a “mule,” meaning she sometimes transports drugs for Cheese.

We later see Cheese snorting cocaine, then lighting and smoking a cigarette or joint.

Lionel is a recovering alcoholic. And during a tense talk with Patrick at a bar, he orders three shots and a chaser. We see him drink one of the shots. “Twenty-three years is something, right?” he says.

Other Noteworthy Elements

We learn that detectives Broussard and Poole once planted evidence in a guy’s house, effectively sending him to prison. Helene and her boyfriend have stolen money from Cheese.

[ Spoilers are necessary in order to fully deal with the morality—and immorality—of this movie. Several are found in this “Conclusion.” ]

After a tireless search, Patrick untangles the web around Amanda’s disappearance and finds her living at the home of Jack Doyle, the police chief. Turns out, the kidnapping was a plot to get the child away from bad-news Helene and into the hands of a family who could better care for her.

The discovery leaves Patrick with a hefty dilemma: leave the child with Jack and his wife, or call the police, who will return Amanda to her unstable, natural mother?

Patrick calls the cops.

But Gone Baby Gone wants us to hate this decision. Doyle oozes integrity. Helene is an absolute mess. We see flashes of humanity in her, but we all know what Amanda’s upbringing will be like if she returns to Helene’s custody.

Here’s the thing, though: If we fully engage with this take-it-or-leave-it decision the film forces on us, we have to come to grips with the fact that Patrick makes the absolute right call. It’s right legally. It’s right morally. Neighbors and “friends” just can’t go nabbing kids from their parents’ homes just because they think they’re bad parents.

And here’s another bit of truth: Not only do we have laws against snatching other people’s kids, but we also have systems to protect children from dangerously irresponsible parents. There are other remedies for Amanda than having a police chief steal her.

Film directors, lately, have fallen in love with vigilantism. Death Sentence. The Brave One. We Own the Night . Now add Gone Baby Gone , since it tells us that sometimes a greater good can be served by breaking the law. The logic that drives this affection falls apart, of course, when we begin to ask whose “greater good” we’re talking about. Society’s “greater good” can be drawn a thousand different ways. If we were all allowed to create and ignore laws based on the whims of our own internal moral compasses, some of us might start gunning down our neighbors because they let their grass grow too high.

This is why we place ourselves under higher authority—under God’s law and under a nation’s laws. We accept those laws because we know they’re good for us, even when they might have flaws and cracks in them.

Gone Baby Gone reminds us that we must always strive to wield these laws with fairness and compassion. But it also sets us up to question the laws themselves.

A postscript: Scripture is full of passages that remind us of what happens when everyone does what is right in his or her own eyes. Deuteronomy 12, Judges 17 and 21, Job 32, and Proverbs 12 and 21 all tackle this seemingly modern subject that is in reality nowhere near to being new under the sun.

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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Gone Baby Gone (United States, 2007)

Gone Baby Gone is powerful stuff - a movie that derives its plot twists from moral conundrums rather than from narrative sleight of hand. The best mystery novels are the ones that use the genre as a stepping-off point for developing characters and examining issues. First-time director Ben Affleck has successfully captured the essence of a written mystery on the screen. The production engages viewers not only on an emotional level but on an intellectual one. As the onion-like layers of the story are peeled away to reveal new ethical dilemmas that force the lead character to question what truly is "right," we are invited to answer those questions alongside him then evaluate whether the consequences of his choices justify the decisions he made. It's a rare motion picture that provides such an uncompromising perspective of what is right and what is moral.

Affleck, perhaps deciding that the future looks better behind the camera than in front of it, makes a debut that could only be called auspicious. This is a mature film, and Affleck was clearly determined the use every ounce of the skill he possesses to do it right ( Gone Baby Gone is his favorite book). It helps to start with solid source material, and the novel is as complex and intriguing as another Dennis Lehane effort, Mystic River , which was turned into a memorable movie not so long ago by actor-turned-director Clint Eastwood.

As the film opens, we are introduced to the boyfriend/girlfriend private investigator team of Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) and Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan). They are approached by Lionel and Beatrice McCready (Titus Welliver and Amy Madigan), whose young niece, Amanda (Madeline O'Brien), has been kidnapped. Patrick and Angie reluctantly take the case, only to be faced by a wall of opposition comprised of the girl's bitter, drug-addicted mother, Helene (Amy Ryan); the police chief, Jack Doyle (Morgan Freeman); and the two cops working the case, Remy Bressant (Ed Harris) and Nick Poole (John Ashton). It doesn't take long before Patrick and Angie discover a critical clue but their best efforts cannot prevent the tragedies that force them both to re-consider key life values.

To discuss the dilemmas faced by Patrick and Angie would be to reveal too much of the plot. Suffice it to say they are powerful and divisive. It's easy to see both sides of the arguments. The film also doesn't back away from showing consequences, and the phrase "no good deed goes unpunished" comes to mind more than once. The film's final scene points to a possible future beyond the end credits that makes one feel nothing but sympathy for one of the characters sitting on that sofa at the end.

Since this is a mystery/thriller, it should come as no surprise to learn that the film does not proceed in a straightforward manner. Gone Baby Gone employs twists and misdirection, some of which is predictable and some of which is not. Those paying attention will not experience a big "eureka!" moment (there is one, but it is heavily foreshadowed), but the plot is serpentine enough to keep the viewer involved and uncertain of what the next corner will reveal. The film is comprised of three distinct acts. The first two are only tangentially related but the third one dovetails with what has preceded it and ties everything together.

I haven't seen enough of Casey Affleck to make an assessment of his range an actor. As in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford , his approach is low-key even in high intensity scenes. My impression is that he's more of a character actor than a lead, but he is effective as Patrick. This isn't an Oscar-worthy performance but neither is it a problem. Likewise, Michelle Monaghan's portrayal of Angie is workmanlike. The best performances come from (not unexpectedly) Morgan Freeman, Ed Harris, and (perhaps unexpectedly) Amy Ryan. All three get maximum value out of their screen time. Ryan, playing Amanda's mother, is especially noteworthy. She humanizes a vile person, showing vulnerability alongside a startling streak of neglect and self-centeredness. Freeman plays someone whose nobility may be a little tarnished and Harris gets to explore a wide range of traits.

With his first feature, Affleck has made an indelible mark on the fall 2007 movie season. He may have taken audiences by surprise this time, but he will be watched in the future. The strength of the film's subject matter and the intelligence and perceptiveness with which it is approached make this not merely an October diversion but a genuine Oscar contender. It's not an easy film because it challenges us and, while the final scene offers closure, it does so with a side dish of painful ambiguity. Gone Baby Gone has a legitimate shot for placement on my end-of-the-year list of 2007's Top 10 films.

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The Ending Of Gone Baby Gone Explained

Patrick looking frustrated with the police

If you ask a random member of the public to name a movie written and/or directed by Ben Affleck, you're probably going to get Good Will Hunting or Argo , or possibly even The Town . But 10 years after Good Will Hunting rescued him from several forgettable roles and helped to establish him as a serious actor and writer, Ben Affleck made his feature directorial debut with the twisty mystery flick, Gone Baby Gone . Despite great reviews and even a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for Amy Ryan (aka Holly from The Office ), Gone Baby Gone became one of those critically acclaimed films that failed to see great traction at movie theaters.

Affleck also co-wrote the screenplay, which was based on a novel from Dennis Lehane. Set in Boston (of course), the movie starred his brother Casey Affleck as private investigator Patrick Kenzie, who is hired by the aunt and uncle of a missing four-year-old named Amanda (Madeline O'Brien). Patrick and his work partner, Angie (Michelle Monaghan, who you may know from a certain underrated Robert Downey Jr. movie ), initially believe that a drug dealer has kidnapped Amanda to get revenge against her mother Helene (Ryan), who worked as his drug mule and stole money from him. However, after a planned exchange between the dealer and the police goes wrong, Patrick slowly realizes that details about the case don't add up — and the cops know more than they're letting on.

Gone Baby Gone explores what is right vs. what is just

Patrick and Remy talk outside the hospital

In the final minutes of Gone Baby Gone , Patrick visits police captain Jack Doyle (Morgan Freeman), having figured out that the police department conspired to take Amanda from her neglectful mother Helene, and give her a stable and loving home with Doyle and his wife. Sure enough, a very much alive Amanda runs out the front door and happily hugs Doyle.

The confrontation between Doyle and Patrick sums up a central conflict explored in Gone Baby Gone : is it ever right to do something that is illegal and widely deemed to be immoral (e.g. kidnapping a child) because you believe that it will lead to a happier outcome than anything the official justice system will deliver?

In this scene, Doyle argues that if Amanda stays with Helene, she'll probably go down the same dismal path as her mother. He arranged the kidnapping, he says, "for the sake of the child." Patrick argues that Helene is Amanda's mother and therefore has the right to raise her. He says that even if Doyle could give Amanda more emotional support and material possessions, at some point she will learn the truth and feel cheated out of knowing her biological family.

However, Patrick hasn't always been so clear about extrajudicial decisions. After once discovering the body of a child at a pedophile's house, he executed the pedophile on the spot. When another cop, Remy (Ed Harris), tells him that he did the right thing, and admits to planting evidence on a different man so his child would be taken away, Patrick disagrees. He says he wouldn't commit the murder again, if given a second chance. Remy says, "Doesn't make it wrong, though, does it?" Patrick doesn't respond.

Gone Baby Gone is secretly a rogue cop story

In Gone Baby Gone , an interesting layer in the debate between extrajudicial actions versus obeying legal processes is the fact that the people doing the former are police officers. As a private investigator, Patrick is arguably in a better position to operate in grey areas, because he does so as a private citizen, not as a representative of the criminal justice system. But when the chips are down, he's the one who believes in following the law — at least in theory.

True stories about police committing acts of vigilante justice typically revolve around corruption and horrific brutality . But the Hollywoodized version of the rogue police officer usually portrays the character as someone willing to bend the rules because that's what it takes to catch "the bad guys." These movies don't often stop to interrogate what "bad guys" actually means.

The ending of Gone Baby Gone fits this trope. The movie's big twist revolves around fooling us into thinking that Remy's involvement in the kidnap is about money, only to reveal that the whole police department was acting in what it believed was Amanda's best interest. The movie leans on the ultimate bad guy — adults who hurt children — to push us to ditch any lingering conflict we have about such pesky things as due process. By the final scene, even Patrick is doubting his decision after he finds Helene leaving her daughter unsupervised to go on a night out.

Gone Baby Gone is slicker than your average cop action thriller, and it likes to play up its debates around morality. But in the end, it's a drama about police framing and even murdering civilians in the name of achieving their own brand of justice.

Gone Baby Gone is available to stream on Paramount+.

Gone Baby Gone

By Peter Travers

Peter Travers

Not only did Ben Affleck have to sweat out making his directing debut by adapting a Dennis Lehane novel (Clint Eastwood already set the bar on Lehane’s Mystic River ), he also cast his brother Casey in the leading role. Nepotism would be the least of Affleck’s problems if Gone Baby Gone flatlined onscreen. No worries. The brothers Affleck both emerge triumphant in this mesmerizing thriller. As Boston private detective Patrick Kenzie, taking on small-time cases with his girlfriend, Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan), Casey — just off a standout turn gunning down Brad Pitt’s Jesse James — grabs his breakthrough role and runs with it. Patrick is so green that cops call him Harry Potter. And it doesn’t take long to figure he’s in over his head investigating the case of a missing four-year-old girl who has a crackhead mother (Amy Ryan is a sensation). Note to Oscar: Get Ryan on the nomination list pronto. Affleck and co-writer Aaron Stockard know that Lehane’s novels are only mysteries on the surface. It’s underneath that emotions simmer.

Affleck’s first time at bat as a filmmaker is more than promising, it’s strikingly assured, showing a keen eye for the exact moment when action defines character. With the help of camera master John Toll ( Braveheart ), he brings alive the Boston neighborhood (both Afflecks are natives) where cocaine, kidnapping, pedophilia and murder lurk in the everyday shadows. And he gets richly detailed work from an outstanding cast, slyly twisting the magisterial image of Morgan Freeman as a police captain and giving full vent to the explosive Ed Harris — is this guy ever bad? — playing another cop with something to hide. Gone Baby Gone is full of dark secrets, and how they unravel will keep you glued.

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Gone Baby Gone (2007)

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GONE, BABY, GONE

"moral ambiguities".

	None	Light	Moderate	Heavy
Language
Violence
Sex
Nudity

What You Need To Know:

(B, CC, LLL, VVV, S, N, A, DD, M) Light moral worldview with some strong Christian and biblical content, but set in a dark world and undercut by some moral ambiguities left up to the viewer to decide, with little or no standards by which to make such decisions, plus even the good characters do some morally questionable things or use the false standard that the end justifies the means, including vigilante justice; at least 158 mostly strong obscenities, nine strong profanities, and six light profanities, plus man vomits after violently killing someone; very strong violence with blood and some action violence includes gunfight, threats, man shot in chest, man shot in head, another man shot to death, one child’s dead body shown, implied drowning of one child, woman jumps off cliff into water to save child, and vigilante retribution in one scene; no sex scenes but there is a single mother and detectives track down a pedophile who has taken a child, plus unmarried couple appears to live together; no sexual nudity and brief upper male nudity in one scene; alcohol use; smoking and some drug references, including references to bad people selling drugs; and, deceit, faking evidence, kidnapping, and bad mother figure.

More Detail:

GONE BABY GONE is an extremely intense, morally complex detective thriller. It offers some provocative moral questions for the audience to answer on their own, including a provocative use of Jesus Christ’s command to “be wise as serpents, yet innocent (or harmless) as doves,” but leaves viewers hanging with a sadness that dampens hope.

Adapted by Director Ben Affleck and Aaron Stockard from a novel by Dennis Lehane (who also wrote MYSTIC RIVER), the movie opens in a downtrodden Boston neighborhood, where there is media frenzy over a missing little girl, 4-year-old Amanda McCready. Amanda’s desperate aunt and uncle plead with local private investigators Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) and Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan) to take the case.

Patrick and Angie, however, know Amanda’s neighborhood and they also know the truth about Amanda’s drug-addicted, irresponsible mother, Helene (played by Amy Ryan). Reluctantly, they take the case, and the two police detectives handling the disappearance, Remy Bressant (played by Ed Harris) and Nick Poole (played by John Ashton), reluctantly clue the PIs in on the case. Using their knowledge of Boston’s underbelly and Helene’s hangouts, Patrick and Angie uncover a trail leading to Helene’s own drug dealer, for whom she works as a courier. Just as the case is about to be cracked, the tragedy of Amanda’s fate is sadly revealed in a flash of gunfire.

Everyone tries to move on, but a haunted Patrick cannot walk away. As more and more violence breaks out, he uncovers a web of lies that confronts him with a moral dilemma and questions of right and wrong.

Ben Affleck, co-screenwriter and director, does a brilliant job of adapting Dennis Lehane’s novel. He coaxes coaxing some dynamite performances from an amazing cast. In fact, this is a much better adaptation than Clint Eastwood’s acclaimed version of Lehane’s novel MYSTIC RIVER.

Even so, at least one of the surprising twists at the end was a little hard to follow, though it quickly becomes clear what’s happening. Also, there seem to be a couple plot holes, one of which even the movie brings up but doesn’t seem to answer. Furthermore, although the movie brings up some worthwhile moral issues and questions, it leaves many of them up to the viewer to decide. At one point, one of the characters tries to explain his actions by saying that what he did he did for the greater good, but Casey Affleck’s private eye character quotes Jean Renoir’s classic movie RULES OF THE GAME by sarcastically replying, “Everyone has his reasons.” In the final scene, however, the movie strongly suggests that the character probably was right to do what he did, and the private eye has begun to realize it. In fact, Patrick clearly begins to feel guilty that he may not have done the right thing, even though to do otherwise could be seen as saying the end justifies the means.

Of course, the Bible provides us with moral guidelines and moral standards to make tough moral decisions. Even then, however, intelligent biblical scholars disagree on some questions. For example, is it okay to lie to the National Socialist at your door who wants to know if you are hiding any Jews in the attic? Some scholars say it is never okay to lie. They say that you should lie to the Nazi and then ask God to forgive you for lying. Other scholars, however, point to the mid-wives in Egypt lying to protect the Hebrew children. They say that, in the case of the Nazi, when you lie to the Nazi, you are actually following a higher moral law, to protect innocent life. Thus, it’s not a sin to lie to an evil person in order to protect a life.

Be that as it may, GONE BABY GONE fits well into the genre of the hardboiled detective movie. Such movies take place in a dark world where society has become increasingly corrupt. The hero in such stories often faces moral dilemmas and difficult moral complexities. He must, therefore, find nuanced ways of navigating this moral corruption while retaining some personal sense of moral honor and upholding some sense of moral virtue. Sometimes, the hero succeeds in meeting these challenges; sometimes, the results are mixed. This is part of the joy, not to mention social and even moral benefit, of reading and watching such stories.

Thus, in that sense, GONE BABY GONE is interesting in spite of its problems, which include an abundance of strong foul language and some very strong violence.

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Gone Baby Gone

Two Boston area detectives investigate a little girl's kidnapping, which ultimately turns into a crisis both professionally and personally.
When 4 year old Amanda McCready disappears from her home and the police make little headway in solving the case, the girl's aunt Beatrice McCready hires two private detectives Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro. The detectives freely admit that they have little experience with this type of case, but the family wants them for two reasons - they're not cops and they know the tough Boston neighborhood in which they all live. As the case progresses, Kenzie and Gennaro face drug dealers, gangs and pedophiles. When they are about to solve their case, they are faced with a moral dilemma that could tear them apart. — garykmcd
When four year old Amanda McCready goes missing, and the police make little headway in solving the case, the family hire Private Investigators (and partners) Patrick Kenzie & Angela Gennaro to assist the with the investigation. As the plot progresses, the probability of Amanda being found dwindles, and the investigation plunges the PI's into the dark underworld of Dorchester and a moral dilemma that could tear them apart. — BecksyKane
Thirty-one year old Patrick Kenzie grew up in Dorchester, a working class neighborhood of Boston where the family names remain the same over generations. He still lives there with his personal - professional partner Angie Gennaro, the two who are private detectives specializing in missing persons cases. The police are working on a high profile case of an abducted four year neighborhood child named Amanda McCready. The Boston Police Department take child abduction cases to heart because the daughter of Jack Doyle, the police chief, had been abducted and eventually murdered years earlier. Three days after Amanda's abduction, Patrick and Angie are hired by Lionel and Bea McCready, Amanda's maternal uncle and aunt, to augment the police investigation. Despite this case being outside of the norm of Patrick and Angie's regular cases, the McCready's hope that Patrick's knowledge of the neighborhood and its people will help, especially in getting the neighborhood underlife to open up, especially if they are not willing to speak to the police. Patrick and Angie quickly learn that Amanda's single mother, Helene McCready, is no saint, she being a drug runner and involved in the theft of drug moneys. Patrick, Angie and the police believe that her criminal history has something to do with the abduction. As Patrick and Angie get further into the investigation with the police, they collectively deal with issues of whether the means justifies the ends, and whether the end goal is morally the right thing to do. — Huggo
Dorchester, one of the toughest neighborhoods in all of Boston, is no place for the weak or innocent. Its a territory defined by hard heads and even harder luck, its streets littered with broken families, hearts, dreams. When one of its own, a 4-year-old girl, goes missing, private investigators Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro don't want the case. But after pleas from the child's aunt, they open an investigation that will ultimately risk everything -- their relationship, their sanity, and even their lives -- to find a little girl-lost. — JustAli25
In Dorchester, Boston, P.I. Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) and his partner and girlfriend Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan) witness a televised plea by Helene McCready (Amy Ryan) for the return of her abducted four-year-old daughter Amanda (Madeline O'Brien) and the girl's favorite doll, Mirabelle. Amid a media frenzy, Amanda's aunt Beatrice "Bea" McCready (Amy Madigan) and Uncle Lionel (Titus Welliver) hire them to find her. Dottie (Jill Quigg) is Helene's best friend. Helene is abusive towards Patrick and Angie, but Bea begs Patrick to take the case. The duo finds that Helene visits the local bar 5 nights a week to do coke lines. Using his connections with various criminals, Patrick discovers that Helene and her boyfriend Ray are addicts and drug mules for a local Haitian drug lord named Cheese (Edi Gathegi) and had recently stolen $130,000 from him. Helene admits that on one of the drug runs, when they delivered 4 kilos to a biker gang in Nashua, the cops hit the bikers just as they were walking away with the money. Ray and Helene thought they could blame the cops and told Cheese that the cops stole the money from the bikers. After discovering Ray has been murdered by Cheese's men, Patrick and Angie join police detectives Remy Bressant (Ed Harris) and Nick Poole (John Ashton) in a plan to find Amanda, who they assume has been taken by Cheese. Helene reveals she buried the money in the backyard and tearfully makes Patrick promise to her that he will bring Amanda home alive. Remy and Nick take the money with them with the promise to meet Cheese and exchange Amanda for the money. Patrick meets with Cheese (he says Cheese will never talk to a badge) and tries to negotiate the return of the stolen money in exchange for Amanda, but Cheese denies any involvement in the girl's disappearance. The following day, Captain Jack Doyle (Morgan Freeman) reads Patrick a telephone transcript of Cheese calling into the station to set up an exchange for Amanda. The exchange at a nearby quarry (Angie think it is odd that Cheese would ask for the exchange so far out of town) is botched after a gunfight breaks out (Patrick and Angie were stationed on the other side of the quarry lake to take possession of Amanda, while the cops were hand over the money to Cheese at the near side of the quarry lake), and Cheese is killed. It is believed that Amanda fell in the quarry's pond and drowned; her doll is retrieved from the water by Angie and returned to Helene. Doyle, whose own daughter was killed years before, goes into early retirement following public outcry over the mishap. Two months later, a seven-year-old boy is abducted in Everett, and Patrick receives information that he was taken by Corwin Earle (Matthew Maher), a known child molester, who is living with two married cocaine addicts. Patrick gains entry into the house and after observing evidence of the abducted boy, returns with Remy and Nick late at night to rescue him. Before they enter the house, the woman shoots her husband dead and fatally wounds Nick before chasing Patrick into Corwin's room. Patrick discovers the dead child, and he executes Corwin as Remy arrives and kills the woman. The following evening, an intoxicated Remy tries to alleviate Patrick's guilt and confides that he once planted evidence on an abusive husband to help the man's family escape with Ray's help (Ray had called Remy with the tip of a stash at the suspects house, but his raid revealed nothing). Patrick recalls that Remy had originally told him that he didn't know Ray. Following Nick's funeral, Patrick speaks to a police officer named Devin (Michael K. Williams) and tells him that Remy lied to him about knowing Ray. Devin tells him that Remy and Doyle knew about Cheese's stolen money before Cheese even knew it was missing. Patrick goads Lionel into meeting him in a bar and pieces together that Lionel and Remy had conspired to stage a fake kidnapping in order to take the drug money for themselves and to teach Helene a lesson, which Lionel finally admits. Lionel further reveals that Bea went nuts and involved the media and Patrick. when Patrick found the money, Lionel and Remy arranged the fake exchange at the quarry. Cheese figured out it was a set up and started shooting. Amanda ran and fell into the lake. Remy enters the bar wearing a mask, staging a robbery to interrupt their conversation. Patrick realizes that Remy plans to kill them, so he yells aloud that Remy kidnapped Amanda. The bartender shoots Remy twice in the back. Remy flees, pursued by Patrick to the rooftop of a nearby building, where he dies from his wounds. Patrick is questioned by the police and realizes Doyle is involved when he learns that the police don't use phone transcripts. Arriving at Doyle's home, Patrick and Angie find Amanda alive and well. Doyle admits he was part of the kidnapping and helped set up the fake exchange to frame Cheese. Patrick threatens to call the authorities, but Doyle tries to convince him that Amanda will have a better life with him instead of with her neglectful mother. Patrick discusses the choice with Angie who says she will hate Patrick if he returns Amanda to her mother. However, Patrick calls the police to collect Amanda, as he cannot bring himself to break his promise to Helene and believes she belongs with her mother, regardless of Helene's parenting. Doyle and Lionel are arrested, and Patrick and Angie break up. Patrick later visits Helene as she is preparing for a date. He learns that she has not made appropriate plans for a babysitter, so he volunteers to watch Amanda. After Helene leaves, Patrick sits down and asks Amanda about her doll Mirabelle, but Amanda says the doll's name is Anabelle. Patrick sits in silence, realizing Helene did not even know the name of her daughter's favorite doll.

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Gone baby gone.

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Casey affleck, michelle monaghan, morgan freeman, amy madigan, titus welliver, screenrant review, gone baby gone review.

One of the best movies I have seen this year... highly recommended.

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Gone Baby Gone 2008, directed by Ben Affleck
Gone Baby Gone (2007)
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Gone Baby Gone
Faiz D Gone Baby Gone is a gripping thriller with a terrific cast. Rated 3.5/5 Stars • Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 08/29/24 Full Review mark g Exceptional film. I loved the book and loved the movie ...
Babes in the hood movie review (2007)
Babes in the hood. Crime. 114 minutes ‧ R ‧ 2007. Roger Ebert. October 18, 2007. 4 min read. Casey Affleck proves he s more than just a kid brother in Gone and The Assassination of Jesse James... Boston seems like the most forbidding city in crime movies. There are lots of movies about criminals in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York and points ...
Gone Baby Gone
Gone Baby Gone. NYT Critic's Pick. Directed by Ben Affleck. Crime, Drama, Mystery, Thriller. R. 1h 54m. By Manohla Dargis. Oct. 19, 2007. For his first time behind the camera as a director, the ...
Gone Baby Gone Movie Review
Our review: Parents say(3 ): Kids say(1 ): An impressive, confidently helmed vehicle that ably mixes grit with heart, Gone Baby Gone lays to rest any impression that Affleck's talent, much-lauded in the Good Will Hunting days, is no more. From the first frame on, Ben Affleck's affection -- and, more important, his respect -- for his native city ...
The Movie Review: 'Gone Baby Gone'
The Movie Review: 'Gone Baby Gone'. By Christopher Orr. October 19, 2007. G one Baby Gone begins, simply--if horribly--enough with the taking of a little girl. Four-year-old Amanda McCready is ...
Gone Baby Gone
Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Apr 4, 2011. Joshua Starnes ComingSoon.net. A tense meditation on morality in the modern world, Gone Baby Gone is a superb crime thriller featuring a star ...
Gone Baby Gone Reviews
Dec 8, 2011. Gone Baby Gone is a movie that takes you for a very exciting ride from beginning to end. It is based on the Dennis Lehane novel. Gone Baby Gone takes place in Boston and is about a 4-year-old girl that goes missing and her aunt hires two private detectives to augment the investigation.
Gone Baby Gone (2007)
Gone Baby Gone: Directed by Ben Affleck. With Casey Affleck, Michelle Monaghan, Morgan Freeman, Ed Harris. Two Boston area detectives investigate a little girl's kidnapping, which ultimately turns into a crisis both professionally and personally.
Gone Baby Gone
Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) is a private investigator who works with his girlfriend (Michelle Monaghan) in a tight-knit Boston neighborhood. They are asked by distraught relatives to help the ...
Gone Baby Gone (2007) Movie Review from Eye for Film
The disappearance of four-year-old Amanda McCready is not Patrick's kind of case: too much media, too many cops and too great a chance of a grisly outcome. But when Amanda's distraught aunt and uncle (Amy Madigan and Titus Welliver) come begging, he reluctantly accepts; and as he and Angie delve deeper into the case - and into the life of ...
Gone Baby Gone Review
Gone Baby Gone Review Movies. By Brian Rentschler. Published Oct 20, 2007. Your changes have been saved. Email is sent. Email has already been sent. close. Please verify your email address. ... Gone Baby Gone is a crime drama centering on a detective investigating the disappearance a little girl. But soon after he begins digging for the truth ...
Gone Baby Gone Review
15. Original Title: Gone Baby Gone. Crime novelist Dennis Lehane (who has also written episodes of The Wire) is known for the acute sense of place and mood of desolation he evokes in writing of ...
Gone Baby Gone
Gone Baby Gone is a 2007 American neo-noir crime thriller film directed by Ben Affleck in his directorial debut. Affleck co-wrote the screenplay with Aaron Stockard based on the 1998 novel of the same name by Dennis Lehane.The film stars Casey Affleck and Michelle Monaghan as two Boston private investigators hunting for a young girl abducted from her single mother's apartment in Dorchester.
Gone Baby Gone
The 4-year-old disappeared, as if she'd never been. Her disappearance sparks a citywide obsession. The front of McCready's Boston home is a circus, filled with policemen and camera crews. And, as Amanda's mom looks on mournfully, her aunt sends a message to Amanda's kidnappers: We won't press charges—just give her back.
Gone Baby Gone (2007)
Director, Screenplay. Dennis Lehane. Novel. Aaron Stockard. Screenplay. When 4 year old Amanda McCready disappears from her home and the police make little headway in solving the case, the girl's aunt, Beatrice McCready hires two private detectives, Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro. The detectives freely admit that they have little experience ...
Gone Baby Gone (2007)
Gone Baby Gone is a crime thriller with significant surprises and twists. The excellent cast and performances accentuated the emotional toll of working on a kidnapping case, and that emotional weight saturates every aspect of the film. Unfortunately, that heavy tone makes the movie a little challenging to enjoy.
Gone Baby Gone
A movie review by James Berardinelli. Gone Baby Gone is powerful stuff - a movie that derives its plot twists from moral conundrums rather than from narrative sleight of hand. The best mystery novels are the ones that use the genre as a stepping-off point for developing characters and examining issues. First-time director Ben Affleck has ...
The Ending Of Gone Baby Gone Explained
These movies don't often stop to interrogate what "bad guys" actually means. The ending of Gone Baby Gone fits this trope. The movie's big twist revolves around fooling us into thinking that Remy ...
Gone Baby Gone
As Boston private detective Patrick Kenzie, taking on small-time cases with his girlfriend, Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan), Casey — just off a standout turn gunning down Brad Pitt's Jesse ...
Gone Baby Gone (2007)
R 1 hr 53 min Oct 19th, 2007 Crime, Drama, Mystery. When 4 year old Amanda McCready disappears from her home and the police make little headway in solving the case, the girl's aunt, Beatrice ...
GONE, BABY, GONE
GONE BABY GONE is an extremely intense, morally complex detective thriller. Adapted from a novel by Dennis Lehane, the movie stars Director Ben Affleck's talented brother Casey as Patrick Kenzie. A private investigator in Boston, Patrick works with his girlfriend, Angie Gennaro, played by Michelle Monaghan.
Gone Baby Gone (2007)
In Dorchester, Boston, P.I. Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) and his partner and girlfriend Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan) witness a televised plea by Helene McCready (Amy Ryan) for the return of her abducted four-year-old daughter Amanda (Madeline O'Brien) and the girl's favorite doll, Mirabelle. Amid a media frenzy, Amanda's aunt Beatrice ...
Gone Baby Gone Summary, Trailer, Cast, and More
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