Gone Baby Gone

directed by Ben Affleck
screenplay by Ben Affleck and Aaron Stockard
novel by Dennis Lehane
USA 2007

For whatever it's worth, let's not forget the guy's an academy award winner. Though it has been buried by years of so many completely ridiculous performances and juicy off-screen tabloidery, Good Will Hunting was a timely, intelligent, and tasteful piece of writing that should at least be recognized as an exciting offering by a couple of future super-celebs. Also let's not forget the obvious brains behind the Askewniverse roles. His inclusion in the Hollywood silliness self-awareness campaign of Kevin Smith (i.e. "...Affleck was the bomb in Phantoms.") at least belies Entertainment Tonight's cookie cutter version of the adorable but intellectually irrelevant leading man. So upon closer review of the evidence, perhaps a solid and smart directorial debut for Ben Affleck is not so drastically surprising. In fact, I don't think I'm the only one who had some inkling of curiosity as to when this lug would deliver on some of these vague promises.

Gone Baby Gone is not without its shortcomings, but there's a unique message that slowly builds a case as each new piece of tainted evidence comes to light. Young and attractive Patrick and Angie watch the neighborhood crisis on TV, a step removed from the world just outside their doorway. A shameless and domestically challenged Helene spits venom at her sister-in-law, and Patrick and Angie's underlying relationship tensions are like a drop in the ocean of trouble that is blue-collar Boston (or any city, for that matter). Angie, in another nice directorial touch, is deftly pushed aside for the entire first half of the movie, until she explodes past the men, over a hundred-foot cliff to certain peril. Ineffectual masculine power struggles are easily blown apart by the raw passion of the fairer sex. It's here that the film changes, and as Patrick becomes caught in a torrent of harsh difficulties, something in the filmmaking itself feels wrong. There are recognizable genre elements, but certain plot details become unimportant, while others are seemingly forgotten. Patrick slowly picks his way through the mess, and likewise the plot eventually makes sense out of the strangeness. In contrast to the Coens' No Country for Old Men, for instance, where we have a cohesive and meticulously formulated plot carrying us through the difficult intellectual material, GBG instead nearly falls to pieces in its construction of a similarly alienating environment.

In the end, Patrick champions the working class against the meddling upper-echelons. But in this case it's not a case of corporate exploitation, or any such Moore-ian social injustice. Affleck and novelist Dennis Lehane (also the author of Mystic River) have embedded an indictment of that same working class. What a statement! To boot, there are overtones of the fate vs. free will argument. Very nice. Lastly, Amy Ryan's portrayal of Helene is wicked. Only a serious commitment to a view of the world from the bottom up could have produced such righteous selfishness. It must have been a terrifying experience.