gone baby gone movie reviews

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.

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 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.

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 .

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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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Gone Baby Gone (2007)

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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.

About the Author

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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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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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.

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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 and 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.

Directed by Ben Affleck

Everyone wants the truth... until they find it.

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 neighborhood in which they all live.

Casey Affleck Michelle Monaghan Morgan Freeman Ed Harris John Ashton Amy Ryan Amy Madigan Titus Welliver Michael Kenneth Williams Edi Gathegi Mark Margolis Madeline O'Brien Slaine Trudi Goodman Matthew Maher Jill Quigg Sean Malone Brian Scannell Jay Giannone William Lee William Marlowe Daniel DeMiller Jr. Kenneth Butler Jr. Stephen Curran Michael T. Blythe Bob J. Leary Mike Pusateri Paul Sullivan John McColgam Show All… Nicholas Donovan Joseph Thomas-O'Brien Jimmy LeBlanc Mary Bounphasaysonh Fanshen Cox Kippy Goldfarb Elizabeth Duff Cathie Callanan Cameron Henry Bobby Curcuro Kevin Molis Robert Wahlberg Tom Kemp Matt Podolske Joseph Flaherty Carla Antonino Peg Holzemer Chelsea Ladd Josh Marchette Tom McNeeley Paul Hornung Rena Maliszewski Suzanne Schemm Lonnie Farmer Richard Snee Dale Place Gary Tanguay Ted Reinstein Celeste Oliva Patrick Shea Lewis D. Wheeler Michele Proude Tim Estiloz Karen Scalia John Belche Raymond Alongi Joey Vacchio Eamon Brooks Vincent H. Carolan Frank G. Sullivan Karen Ahern Ellen Becker Gray Shana Carr Mark S. Cartier Frank Durant John Franchi Alex Milne Nicholas Purcell Alan Resnic

Director Director

Ben Affleck

Producers Producers

Sean Bailey Alan Ladd Jr. Danton Rissner Chay Carter Amanda Lamb Aaron Stockard

Writers Writers

Ben Affleck Aaron Stockard

Original Writer Original Writer

Dennis Lehane

Casting Casting

Donna Morong Nadia Aleyd

Editor Editor

William Goldenberg

Cinematography Cinematography

Assistant directors asst. directors.

Christopher Surgent Takahide Kawakami

Executive Producer Exec. Producer

David Crockett

Lighting Lighting

Jarred Waldron

Camera Operators Camera Operators

P. Scott Sakamoto Mike Thomas

Production Design Production Design

Sharon Seymour

Art Direction Art Direction

Chris Cornwell

Set Decoration Set Decoration

Kyra Friedman Curcio George Lee

Special Effects Special Effects

Conrad V. Brink Jr.

Visual Effects Visual Effects

Mark Driscoll Henrik Fett

Stunts Stunts

Cort Hessler Shauna Duggins

Composer Composer

Harry Gregson-Williams

Sound Sound

Christian P. Minkler Jon Taylor Alan Rankin Mark P. Stoeckinger Jim Stuebe Jeff Largent Nerses Gezalyan James Moriana Jeffrey Wilhoit

Costume Design Costume Design

Alix Friedberg

Makeup Makeup

John E. Jackson Trish Seeney Nancy Hancock

Hairstyling Hairstyling

Mary L. Mastro Deena Adair Brenda McNally

Miramax The Ladd Company

Releases by Date

05 sep 2007, 19 sep 2007, 20 sep 2007, 30 sep 2007, 08 oct 2007, 18 oct 2007, 16 nov 2007, 27 dec 2007, 14 jun 2008.

Theatrical limited

08 Nov 2007

18 sep 2007, 19 oct 2007, 31 oct 2007, 02 nov 2007, 22 nov 2007, 23 nov 2007, 29 nov 2007, 05 dec 2007, 21 dec 2007, 25 dec 2007, 26 dec 2007, 03 jan 2008, 04 jan 2008, 10 jan 2008, 17 jan 2008, 25 jan 2008, 31 jan 2008, 01 feb 2008, 07 feb 2008, 14 feb 2008, 29 feb 2008, 04 mar 2008, 04 apr 2008, 06 jun 2008, 16 apr 2008, 29 may 2008, 17 sep 2008, 04 apr 2011, 23 apr 2021, 12 aug 2010, releases by country.

Theatrical MA15+
Premiere Filmfestival Gent

Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela

Premiere Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival
Premiere Shanghai International Film Festival
Theatrical 18+
Theatrical 15
Physical DVD
Theatrical K-16
Premiere Deauville Film Festival
Theatrical 12
Theatrical 16
Premiere Capri Film Festival
Premiere Morelia Film Festival

Netherlands

Premiere 16 Film by the Sea Film Festival
TV 16 Veronica
Physical 16 Blu ray
Premiere 15 Oslo International Film Festival

Philippines

Theatrical M/16
Theatrical 18
Premiere American Film Festival

South Africa

Premiere R Westwood, California
Theatrical R

113 mins More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

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As a nation why don’t we recognize and talk about how great this movie is more often?!?!?!?!? I definitely would’ve seen it earlier then today

Review by grace ★★★★

you think ben affleck can’t commit to a relationship because he knows he’ll never love anyone as much as he loves boston?

Review by Danica ★★★★★ 4

i finally watched this with the commentary on and i found out that ben affleck is actually in this because he accidentally ran into a shot and didn't realise until they were editing and finding this out is the highlight of my week

Review by 👽hayley👽 ★★★★

MAKE ME A FUCKING MARTINI

Review by nickusen

A seminal Massachusetts text.

Ben Affleck does this great move throughout where characters have incredibly tense confrontations inside various dingy bars before walking outside into the blinding mid day sun. This hits close to home for anyone who has had to walk outside of the Corner Cafe before an afternoon Bruins game.

The shot of casey affleck in a tracksuit & slaine in boot cut jeans walking in front of a 2003 Lincoln Navigator on the streets of Everett is a One Perfect Shot for guys who played peewee hockey at that one rink in Attleboro.

Review by Alan ★★★½

I didn't expect it to turn that big dark twist and deal with another subject. The last 20 minutes are by far the best part of this film.

Review by Diego Tutweiller ★★ 14

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

After Gone Baby Gone, Argo, and The Town, it's pretty clear that Ben Affleck should stick to acting. These films aren't terrible, but they're hardly worthy of the near-unanimous praise they receive, and Gone Baby Gone might be the most unimpressive of the three. A lot of fuss has been made about the "moral conundrum" in this film, and I suppose that on a purely hypothetical level, the moral quandary posed by the movie invites some debate. However, when it's confined to the parameters and context present in the film, it becomes less of a conundrum and more a matter of simple logic. There is no decision to be made here, and anyone who denies that needs to think it…

Review by #1 gizmo fan ★★½ 8

yeah fuck this movie

Review by Michael James ★★★★ 1

A slow burn realistic crime thriller from Ben Affleck, that’s got a strong script with solid twists and turns, rich thematic layering, fantastic cast, performances, dialogues, cinematography and music. While the first half sets up the mystery elements and stays engaging, the second hour is where the movie scores big time, takes the intensity of the dramatics to another level with its moral dilemma positioning. Despite of a few drags and duds, it’s a convincing neo noir that satisfies on multiple levels.

Review by Drew Clark ★★★★ 1

Sometimes I wonder if the Baldwin brothers look at the Affleck brothers in career envy.

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Gone Baby Gone

Review by brian eggert october 20, 2007.

If I could write a review saying simply “See this movie!” and nothing else, and trust that you would go and see it based on my three-word recommendation, I would. Alas, most moviegoers need more convincing before dropping $8.50 on a ticket. Occasionally, a motion picture is released that, as a critic, requires I restrict myself from divulging one detail too many from prospective viewers. Gone Baby Gone is such a movie. Walking into my screening, I knew little more about it than the cast, title, and director, and perhaps that other critics had given it positive ratings. And that’s the ideal way to see any movie—to take it in without expectation or preconceived notions.

Helmed by first-time director Ben Affleck, the story is based on Dennis Lehane’s novel of the same name (except written Gone, Baby, Gone with commas). If you recall, Lehane’s novel Mystic River was adapted by Brian Helgeland for Clint Eastwood in 2003. The stories follow a similar path: both are set in Boston; both involve plot elements of kidnapping and sexual abuse; both contain staggering turns of character. These turns are not gimmicky plot elements we see coming from a mile down the road. They infer an affecting morality play that leaves us pondering the movie for days.

Casey Affleck, Ben’s younger brother, stars as Patrick Kenzie. He and his girlfriend, Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan), work together as private detectives, searching out debtors and degenerates that don’t want to be found. Their business is local, and they’re good at their job because they know the neighborhood. They know Boston. On the news, they catch word of a 4-year-old girl who was taken from her home. It’s a media circus. Everyone in the neighborhood, dozens of cops, and media galore are virtually camped in the mother Helene’s (Amy Ryan) front yard.

The mother’s sister-in-law Beatrice (Amy Madigan) and her husband Lionel (Titus Welliver) go to Kenzie and Gennaro, seeking the duo’s neighborhood familiarity to assist police in finding their niece. Perhaps people who won’t talk to the police will talk to them. Kenzie admits he’s never handled that type of missing person case. Gennaro is afraid to get involved, fearing that finding a dead or abused child would be too much. These are honest people just trying to do good—but what does “good” mean?

Head of a local missing children’s unit, Chief Doyle (Morgan Freeman), sways Kenzie and Gennaro against getting involved but concedes to extend them unenthusiastic professional courtesies. They’re to meet and exchange information with detectives Remy Bressant (Ed Harris) and Nick Poole (John Ashton). I won’t disclose details of their investigation, other than to say clues are everywhere. We may not notice them because Affleck’s direction relies on subtleties of character, not of zoom-ins on key plot devices or dun-dun-dunnnnn music at significant moments. Characters remain human, as opposed to cliché movie mystery roles, allowing us to submit fully, and be caught off guard by where the story goes.

Our greatest shock, outside of the enthralling narrative, comes from Casey Affleck’s second powerhouse performance this year. Last month audiences likely (and regrettably) missed out on seeing The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford , because Warner Bros. buried the picture with a limited release. Casey Affleck played said assassin, suggesting undertones of sexual obsession and idolization. And now, with Gone Baby Gone , the younger Affleck brother gives his second Oscar-worthy performance of 2007. Both performances rely on Affleck’s ability to display vulnerability just visible under the surface, as both Patrick Kenzie and Robert Ford are characters engulfed in something or someone. Casey has come a long way from “balloon-boy” in Ocean’s Eleven , now graduating beyond one stroke-of-luck performance with the help of his elder brother.

Ben Affleck himself is a considerable talent when he’s behind the camera. People seem to forget his Oscar win (shared with long-time buddy Matt Damon) for Best Original Screenplay in 1997 on Good Will Hunting . Audiences still haven’t forgiven him for Pearl Harbor , Reindeer Games , or Gigli , nor for his tabloid exploits, but they should be praising him for his passion projects, limited as they may be. Despite his onscreen mediocrity, as a writer and director, he creates profound naturalism with brutal, authentic dialogue. His camera paints a near-candid portrait of Boston, shooting real-life bar crowds and neighborhoods in what looks like guerilla filmmaking—these are people with character burned into their faces, not Hollywood actors. Narratively speaking, it recalls the viciousness of Martin Scorsese’s The Departed with corruptibility found in Clint Eastwood’s Mystic River .

Boston has become a place in cinema where characters test themselves by discovering a layer of their persona they never knew existed. That can be said for all of the above-mentioned Bostonian pictures. It’s being depicted as a city of camaraderie and community. Yet, in that community exist seemingly normal people who do despicable things. It’s a nice little metaphor for human nature—well-meaning, but generally cruel.

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Gone Baby Gone Movie Review: A Crime Film for Crime Lovers

Ben Affleck’s complicated and assured 2007 directorial debut Gone Baby Gone was a major surprise coming from a first-time director. Scroll down to read Nick Clement’s Gone Baby Gone movie review!

Rather than churning out an empty action film as his first directorial effort, Affleck, along with co-writer Aaron Stockard, skillfully adapted a morally complex crime novel from Mystic River author Denis Lehane.

Affleck relied upon certain genre tropes (aesthetic and thematic) to propel the piece in key spots.

The film was directed with a veteran’s touch in many instances, and felt uncommonly mature for a first-timer. It no doubt was smart of Affleck to surround himself with top-flight craftspeople in all departments.

Working with a splendid cast of veteran actors as well as recruiting amateurs from the streets of Boston, Affleck showed an immediate ability during the opening moments of Gone Baby Gone with setting a strong atmosphere and authentic flavor.

The story takes place in the working-class, low-income neighborhoods surrounding Beantown, where drug abuse, crime, and poverty are common.

Affleck, a Boston native, has an intrinsic knowledge of these neighborhoods and the people. This results in a film that feels natural and believable, no matter how sordid the particulars of the story get.

Affleck didn’t make an empty action film as his directorial debut. He went and adapted a morally complex crime novel instead – Nick Clement

Casey Affleck had a banner year in 2007, giving terrific performances here and in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. In Gone Baby Gone , he’s private investigator Patrick Kenzie, a low-key private-eye who when push comes to shove isn’t afraid to get nasty.

He lives and works with his girlfriend Angie, played by the pretty yet slightly miscast Michelle Monaghan. They are approached for help by the aunt and uncle of a local four-year-old girl who has disappeared from her apartment. The girl’s mother, Helene, played with diseased, white-trash intensity by Amy Ryan, is a semi-junkie who can barely take care of herself, let alone a child.

The cops are on the case as well. Led by police captain Jack Doyle (Morgan Freeman), and detective Remy Bressant (Ed Harris), though their loyalties remain a mystery.

Gone Baby Gone is almost two movies in one.

Packed full of multiple story-lines all adding up to a sad but honest conclusion. The moral ambiguity that Gone Baby Gone revels in results in an interesting picture to watch.

Gone Baby Gone Dialogue

Some of the actions taken by the characters are questionable. But when you think about some of the nastier and tougher choices that the characters have to make, you might find yourself agreeing with how things end up playing out.

People “get what they deserve” in this movie. There’s a thrill that comes with this overall mentality. “Murder is a sin,” Kenzie quietly remarks to Bressant at a crucial moment in the film. “Depends on who you do it too,” Bressant coolly retorts. It’s a powerful, simple exchange of dialogue.

It provides the audience with an extra layer of insight into an already complicated series of events.

Casey Affleck is positively riveting all throughout Gone Baby Gone . Ditching the purposefully mannered and rigid technique that he brought to his work in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford , the role of Kenzie seems like a role that Affleck was born to play. His non-threatening physical attributes clash with his hot temper.

While holding a gun Affleck looks and feels like a young private investigator.

Even though he may seem too baby-faced for the part upon first sight think again.

Any doubt in your mind will be erased immediately after the first act.

Harris, who seems incapable of ever being bad or uninteresting on-screen, tore up his scenes with a vicious ferocity that only a few actors seem to be able to channel. This is a brooding, menacing film that requires brooding, menacing screen presence, and Harris is right at home.

Freeman, in a slightly different role than what he’s normally asked to do, is his usual suave self. But it’s Amy Ryan who totally stuns as Helene, the disgusting, reprehensible mother of the missing child. Never seeming to truly care about her daughter’s disappearance, Ryan creates a portrait of a mommy-monster that is chilling in its persuasiveness.

Gone Baby Gone is a crime film for crime film lovers.

The story lives in and travels to some tough, upsetting places. Gone Baby Gone features people who are all wounded, either emotionally or physically (or both).

The overriding sense of grime and filth leaves you feeling a little skeevy by the end of it.

Gone Baby Gone movie review by Nick Clement

Gone Baby Gone is powerfully written and directed and acted, and it’s a piece of entertainment that will leave you discussing its themes and story implications long after you’ve watched.

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Nick Clement

Nick Clement is a freelance writer, having contributed to Variety Magazine, Hollywood- Elsewhere, Awards Daily, Back to the Movies (of course), and Taste of Cinema.

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‘Gone Baby Gone’ Movie Review (2007)

By Brad Brevet

You must admit, Ben Affleck knows how to string a story together. Affleck penned the script for Gone Baby Gone along with co-writer Aaron Stockard, adapted from Dennis Lehane’s novel and set out on his directorial debut and he succeeded at almost every turn.

Gone Baby Gone takes us back to the first time Affleck impressed us when he teamed with his buddy Matt Damon to pen the Oscar-winner Good Will Hunting . Yeah, this one heads back to Boston and it is a place that you can tell just by the way this picture is shot and how the words play so well off each other that Ben feels at home here. And casting his little brother Casey in the lead role of private detective Patrick Kenzie makes it all that much better.

Casey already knocked the socks off everyone with his performance in The Assassination of Jesse James , playng the mild-mannered Robert Ford, but he pulls a complete 180 with this one as his character has something of a little man’s syndrome. He is forced to keep puffing himself up to gain respect and despite his meager frame he pulls it off effortlessly. I still contend that when he sings, “Thought I had a double-burger,” from the back of the car in Good Will Hunting he damn near stole that film and in this one he owns it.

Moving along, Patrick is called in on a kidnapping case as a 4-year-old girl has been abducted from her coked out mom and Patrick along with his business partner/girlfriend Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan) are hired by the family on the side to look deeper into the case. As the days tick by it seems the girl will never be found, but as much as the film is about finding the little girl, it has a much deeper story of morality at play and it is a doozy. Trust me, if on your way home you aren’t asking your friends what they would do in “that” situation you really need to turn the car around and go watch it again.

As I said, Ben’s casting of Casey is brilliant and so is the addition of Michelle Monaghan, who plays the perfect partner to Casey’s character. The two work off each other exceptionally well and you really do believe in the relationship they are portraying. Ed Harris also turns in a good performance as the cop heading up the investigation and a lot of good things have been said about Amy Ryan who plays the child’s mother. I am not sure what it says for an actor to say they played a coked out stupid mother well, but in Ryan’s case she nailed it.

Probably the only casting decision I didn’t really like was Morgan Freeman as police captain Jack Doyle. Early on in the film Freeman comes in dressed in his full-on police garb and he is such a dominating actor he seems almost too large for the part. It is a small issue, but it was one that struck me the minute I saw him on screen.

Outside of a couple of pacing issues and a couple of nagging story details at the end, Gone Baby Gone is an excellent film and I can only hope that Ben will stick to writing and directing and keep his face off camera. I know people gave him props for his performance in Hollywoodland , but for the most part he has never really impressed audiences as an actor. Luckily, Ben is ambitious and hasn’t let the gossip rags or criticism keep him from trying new things. Considering how good Gone Baby Gone is I hope he continues down this road and leaves the acting to the professionals.

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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+.

Suggestions

There will be choice: why gone baby gone is the best film of 2007.

It’s a film that from the first to the last frame never forgets what it’s about, and remains unrelentingly faithful to its theme throughout.

I always believed it was the things you don’t choose that make you who you are: your city, your neighborhood, your family. People here take pride in those things. —Patrick Kenzie

Gosh, what a great year 2007 was for movies. You could wipe out the Academy’s five Best Picture nominees, replace them with five others, and still have an honorable rack of best-picture candidates. One of those second five could easily be Ben Affleck’s directorial debut Gone Baby Gone —my personal vote for best film of the year.

A well-crafted film, richly deserving of the honors it has received, No Country for Old Men nevertheless too often feels like a collection of highlights from Cormac McCarthy’s novel, sometimes about one guy, sometimes about another, never matching the novel’s more focused vision. There Will Be Blood is even more all over the map—gorgeous to look at, but without the discipline of knowing where it’s coming from, where it’s headed, and what, if anything, those two points have to do with each other. Michael Clayton bounces between rich characterization and caricature, moral complexity and empty-headed mantras about corporations. Atonement seems to be about one thing, but only for the purpose of revealing ultimately that it is about something else altogether—not romance or betrayal but the power of art to liberate, and the impossibility of such liberation. And it takes that war-epic detour in the middle, as if to say, “Hey, guys, this isn’t a chick flick! Honest !” Juno is primarily about language, but uneasily so, since its characters, who are all sharply defined and mostly well-rounded, nevertheless all speak with the same voice—the impossibly quick-witted and widely experienced voice of one clever writer. And the language of the film’s characters is an end, not a means, never satisfactorily bound to the film’s moral theme about decision-making.

Gone Baby Gone is also about decision-making; but unlike the Academy’s five nominees, it is a film that from the first to the last frame never forgets what it’s about, and remains unrelentingly faithful to its theme throughout. Director Ben Affleck shows an unerring eye and a concentration of intent that makes this film really special.

For one thing, it’s not just about decision-making, but also about the consequences of decisions. Every character in the film makes choices, and the film’s commitment to its South Boston framework continually asks—as smalltime private eye Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) does in his opening voice-over—whether those choices are what define us or not, and whether they are “real” choices at all, or are already determined by the nature of the chooser, dictated by the choices he didn’t make. In this sense, Gone Baby Gone is a more consciously focused (though less intellectually daring) meditation on freedom and determinism than the Coen Brothers’ palimpsest on Cormac McCarthy.

Both Afflecks impart an honest and uncompromising sense of place to the film, through repeated visual and verbal reminders of the neighborhood, its people and the inescapability of the city. In a sense, the film is the anti- Departed , quietly insisting on an authenticity of location that is far more crucial here than in Martin Scorsese’s New Yorker’s love-letter to Boston, where Beantown provides only a convenient situs of crime and police corruption appropriate toa transplanted Hong Kong action film. On the second point, it is also the anti- Juno , since each of its characters sounds authentically like himself, not like one or another aspect of the same writer’s wit.

Indeed, just as Patrick is alone with the decision he ultimately makes, he is also alone among the film’s major characters in the dialect he speaks. His fiancée, Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan), doesn’t sound at all like Patrick, and she ends up leaving him over the choice he makes. It’s not an Irish-vs.-Italian thing; she’s just not from the neighborhood.

Similarly, Detective Remy Bressant (Ed Harris), the Louisiana transplant who engineers the decision that Patrick makes the choice to undo, doesn’t sound like Patrick. But these things aren’t so simple, as Remy remarks to Patrick early in the film: “You might think you’re more from here than me. But I’ve been living here longer than you’ve been alive, so who’s right?”

Patrick’s right—at least in the sense that he makes a choice that someone outside the neighborhood would not make and probably would not understand.

Actually, Patrick makes two choices in the course of the film: to execute the child molester Corwin Earle (Matthew Maher), and to turn in Captain Jack Doyle (Morgan Freeman) and send Amanda home to her mother (Amy Ryan). Everyone supports his first choice, because all of the major characters are uncompromising in their hatred of child molesters. “You gotta take a side”; “you did what you had to do”; “you should be proud of yourself.” Even Patrick’s belief that he wouldn’t make the same choice again “doesn’t make it wrong” in Remy’s view. But in Patrick’s second choice, he is all alone. Bea—his client—isn’t there to thank him, and Helene’s persistence in her old behavior (despite her earlier promise that she would change, and in exact fulfillment of Angie’s prediction that she would be unable to) does nothing to assure Patrick of the rightness of his choice. Ben Affleck pointedly does not take sides; he knows his film is not about rightness of the decision but about the reasons Patrick makes it and has to live with it.

Affleck’s unwillingness to take a side informs his decisions about camera placement and frame composition. Whereas Jason Reitman recognizes the volatility of the abortion/adoption issue in Juno and he and scenarist Diablo Cody carefully deflect and nullify anticipated audience reactions from either side of the fence, Affleck concentrates on what his film is about and chooses a style designed to keep his audience from being distracted from the central idea. As just one example—well, two—in the scenes in which Amanda is taken from the Doyles and reunited with her mother, we are not allowed to glimpse the child’s face. In the police car, we see her, hands to her mouth, in an ambiguous gesture of what could be anticipation or apprehension; but Affleck is smart enough to recognize that any shot of Amanda’s face when she is taken from the arms of Francine Doyle (Kippy Goldfarb) or delivered into those of Helene McCready would introduce interpretation into the shot. It would raise the issue of the welfare of the child.

Child custody decisions in the United States are always made based on an analysis of the “best interests of the child.” Significantly, Gone Baby Gone is not interested in the best interests of Amanda, though most of its characters are, particularly Angie, Remy, and Doyle. Most of the film’s major characters are concerned with the interests of the child or of themselves or both. Angie frames the issue nicely when she wonders whether keeping inside information about police efforts to recover the child is “better for Amanda or better for us.” Remy and Doyle and Lionel make pronouncements such as “I did what I did for the sake of the child” and persuade themselves they are doing “one last good thing.” But Patrick, Helene, and Bea—all from the neighborhood—take for granted their sense that Amanda belongs where she comes from, not with a family that can give her a better life. “It wasn’t your life to give,” Patrick tells Doyle, and imagines a grown-up Amanda accusing him of having left her in the hands of a family that “wasn’t my family.”

Angie and Doyle both sense Patrick’s uncertainty and pounce on it: “This is the kind of thing that if you do, Patrick, you want to be sure,” she tells him; and moments later the retired police chief plays on Patrick’s fear that “this might be an irreparable mistake.” Patrick readily admits his uncertainty, and even in the film’s unforgettable closing shot seems unsure of whether he did the right thing. But this only reaffirms the point that the rightness of the decision is not the issue. In Patrick’s view his choice was a foregone conclusion. Amanda’s belonging to where she came from and the inevitability of Patrick’s choice to that effect are two sides of the same coin—not a coin that has traveled 28 years to get to this time and place, but a coin that was always irrevocably of the neighborhood.

So the dialectic of the film seems to be determinism vs. free will, and the dilemma is evident even in the rhetoric of Captain Doyle, the foremost of the film’s “free will” forces: “We don’t know why people do what they do. Everybody looks out his own window.” He says those words without knowing that with them, he damns himself. He is in the hands of Patrick, and Patrick already knows the only window he’s ever been able to look out of.

Are we free, or do we only believe we are free? Does it matter? Or is it only important how we behave with regard to things we can’t do anything about? This is not only a question that also arises in No Country for Old Men —it’s a question as old as Oedipus. The tale of Oedipus is, among other things, one of the oldest detective stories, perhaps the oldest. It’s about a resourceful guy who’s smarter than anyone else around him, better than everyone else at solving mysteries, figuring things out. But he’s never figured out the one great truth that there are forces he can’t beat, things he can’t outsmart. His tragedy is that all of his great detective work brings him to the recognition that the things he didn’t choose are the ones that made him who he is, and that he himself is the killer he is looking for.

There’s no greater story than that. Gone Baby Gone isn’t exactly the same story, though, since Patrick already knows, from the first words and the first frame of the film, that he is a product of the choices he didn’t make. Still, he’s as good a detective as old Oedipus. He talks like a plain blue-collar guy from the neighborhood, but he really is smarter than everyone else around him, gets out of tight spots through resourcefulness and a little bravado, and really does figure out the mystery through sheer, dogged detective work, when everyone else has given up. But he’s no better (or worse) than Oedipus when it comes to discovering himself and having to live with the consequences. The old cliché that when you save a person you become responsible for that person has never had such a literal meaning as that suggested by the ending of Gone Baby Gone .

The first time I saw Gone Baby Gone , I had the haunting sense of being reminded of something, not directly, but obliquely, in a ghostly sort of way. What especially resonated was the way the film’s central quarry scene leaves you disoriented, untethered, in a kind of free fall. She’s dead; where can the film go from here? “And like that, she was gone,” says Patrick in voiceover, reminding us of The Usual Suspects , and invoking the same kind of loss of narrative equilibrium: Have I been watching the right film at all?

Upon a second viewing, the ghost made itself known: Gone Baby Gone ’s narrative structure is the narrative structure of Vertigo . A detective is hired and becomes obsessed with the person who is the center of his investigation. Then, at the center of the film, that person dies in a fall from a high place, and the shock leaves the detective unhinged and the audience looking around for something to grab hold of. The detective refuses to let go of the investigation, and it almost seems as if his tenacity wills the dead person back into existence. He solves the mystery, with someone else’s confession filling in the details; and then, in his pride at having figured it all out, he plays God, takes control of the destiny of the reborn victim, and ends by precipitating consequences he will find difficult to live with, and facing an agonizing awareness of himself.

There are differences of detail and nuance, of course. Scotty Ferguson was calculatedly hired and was a dupe in a conspiracy; Patrick’s hiring by Bea was accidental, and Lionel and the cops weren’t conspirators, they just made it up as they went along. But it’s the same story. One point of difference, though, is more than incidental: In Vertigo , Scotty, like Oedipus, thought he was acting freely throughout the “case,” only to find he was controlled by forces outside himself; in the second half of the film, he gets a second chance, and even when acting truly freely, ends up causing the same result, with greater and more tragic finality than before. Like Oedipus, he turns out to be the killer he was looking for. Patrick, by contrast, never believed he was free in the first place, and ends up not a lost soul like Scotty Ferguson but with the conviction that he could not have done otherwise. In that context, the consequences Patrick has to live with, bleak as they are, look a lot like redemption.

This article was originally published on 24LiesASecond on May 11, 2008 and cross-published on The House Next Door.

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COMMENTS

'Babygirl' Review: Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson in Dark Thriller
Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson star in 'Babygirl,' Halina Reijn's twisty take on the erotic thriller, also featuring Antonio Banderas.
Babygirl
Rotten Tomatoes, home of the Tomatometer, is the most trusted measurement of quality for Movies & TV. The definitive site for Reviews, Trailers, Showtimes, and Tickets
Babes in the hood movie review (2007)
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 ...
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 ...
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
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 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 ...
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
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)
Red-125 18 July 2017. Gone Baby Gone (2007) is a crime drama co-written and directed by Ben Affleck. It stars Casey Affleck as Patrick Kenzie, a private detective who works in Dorchester. Dorchester is a huge neighborhood in Boston. It contains upscale areas but also some really rough spots.
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 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
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 ...
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
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 ...
Gone Baby Gone Review
Ben Affleck makes his feature film directing debut with Gone Baby Gone, based on a novel by Mystic River author Dennis Lehane that Affleck adapted with co-screenwriter Aaron Stockard. A morality ...
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
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) directed by Ben Affleck • Reviews, film + cast
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 ...
Gone Baby Gone
Gone Baby Gone is such a movie. Walking into my screening, I knew little more about it than the cast, title, and director, and perhaps that other critics had given it positive ratings. And that's the ideal way to see any movie—to take it in without expectation or preconceived notions.
Gone Baby Gone Movie Review: A Crime Film for Crime Lovers
Ben Affleck's complicated and assured 2007 directorial debut Gone Baby Gone was a major surprise coming from a first-time director. Scroll down to read Nick Clement's Gone Baby Gone movie review!. Rather than churning out an empty action film as his first directorial effort, Affleck, along with co-writer Aaron Stockard, skillfully adapted a morally complex crime novel from Mystic River ...
'Gone Baby Gone' Movie Review (2007)
'Gone Baby Gone' Movie Review (2007) October 19, 2007. By Brad Brevet . You must admit, Ben Affleck knows how to string a story together.
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 Movie Reviews
Gone Baby Gone Critic Reviews and Ratings Powered by Rotten Tomatoes Rate Movie. Close Audience Score. The percentage of users who made a verified movie ticket purchase and rated this 3.5 stars or higher. ... Get $5 off ticket orders made on Wednesday, 8/14 using Apple Pay, for any movie playing on any day! Limited quantity. Terms Apply. LEARN ...
There Will Be Choice: Why Gone Baby Gone Is the Best Film of 2007
Gosh, what a great year 2007 was for movies. You could wipe out the Academy's five Best Picture nominees, replace them with five others, and still have an honorable rack of best-picture candidates. One of those second five could easily be Ben Affleck's directorial debut Gone Baby Gone—my personal vote for best film of the year.

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