Gone Baby Gone - Review

Director: Ben Affleck
Writers: Ben Affleck, Aaron Stockard
Starring: Casey Affleck, Morgan Freeman
Runtime: 114 minutes

Ben Affleck's directorial debut is perhaps the most boring, tiresome film I have watched in years.

I struggled to care about the film and its characters. No go. I tried to check out the babe that plays Casey Affleck's private detective sidekick, and I came up with squat. I wanted to relish the scenes with Morgan Freeman, and I found myself embarrassed for him. So I concentrated on Ed Harris, who is always fun to watch, until I saw that he wasn't that into the film, either.

Gone Baby Gone is a knee-jerk story. Those are stories that automatically must be considered relevant or important because of their subject matter. All critics fall for it, and most movie goers, too. Me, I'm not convinced. If you're going to make an important film, it better be done pretty damn well. Crash was about race, so it was grand and won an Oscar, though it has already been forgotten as a film of note. The Accused was about rape, and was considered groundbreaking, though the only thing it is remembered for now is the brutal rape scene. In the case of Gone Baby Gone, it's child abduction. Casey Affleck is a PI on the hunt for a missing girl. He and several other characters say the word "child" a dozen times, and "innocent" a half-dozen more. What could be more important than finding an innocent child?

Nothing, I guess, but if you're going to go the "find an innocent child route," try to make me care about the result.

Ben Affleck with Freeman
Ben Affleck attempts to paint a portrait of southie Boston. Since his Good Will Hunting fame, we've been told that he grew up there and knows the streets. White trash. Fat people with last night's gravy on their shirts. Nobody trusts the cops. The pubs are home to complete jerks that swear every second word. They're tough. They're closed-mouthed. This is a "community." Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) must navigate these mean streets, open people's mouths, and get them to tell him where the girl is.

Which, of course, they don't. They don't trust Kenzie because he is an outsider. They accuse him of talking smart and dressing fancy.

Ah, you're thinking, Kenzie must be wearing a suit and tie with shiny shoes. He must have a Harvard accent, right? Naturally the poor folk won't give him the goods. He's going to have to outsmart them, yes?

Nope. I don't know why the white trash of southie Boston don't trust Kenzie as part of their community, because he dresses like crap, talks exactly like them, and lives in the neighborhood. He knows everybody's name, and he knows where all the crooks hang out. When Ben Affleck decided to make his brother's character a local of the mean streets, the "outsider" stuff should have been tossed out the window. Instead, they try to ride it, and it's so phony as to be laughable. When a foul mouthed bartender accuses Kenzie of being a fancy outsider, I wondered if the bartender was blind. Kenzie could have been his best friend.

So yes, laughable. Except in Gone Baby Gone, there is nothing to laugh at and no one to cheer for. There is no comic relief. The film plods along to a melancholy musical score, apparently lit with one bare bulb. This, I suppose, is meant to give the film mood. In its attempt to make the film a gritty, dreary story of people's darker side, the film comes off as bogus and heavy handed. By the mid-point, you know that the film is trying to steer you in the direction of importance, and by the end, you're glad when the charade is over.

Casey Affleck
Everything about this film feels strangely amateur. Morgan Freeman, who should never look funny, looks funny in a policeman's uniform. It hangs on him like a clown costume. Any one-liners in the film feel placed there as one-liners, and they call attention to the bad writing. The plot is convoluted, but not confusing: confusion implies that you're lost, but still trying to figure everything out. In Gone Baby Gone, I knew that there was no point in making mental notes. The kidnapped girl was somewhere, but the filmmakers weren't going to help me find her. They were going to wait until the end of the film, surprise me with some hacked out plot twist, and use flashbacks to show me where I should have pieced things together. I was right. I won't go into much detail in case I get accused of spoiling it, but I will say this: the plot is preposterous. After you've seen the film, ask yourself if any of the characters would have gone along with such a scheme at the risk of prison sentences and ruined careers.

There is no bad guy to root against, and Casey Affleck is all talk and not much action. He doesn't make events move, but follows along with them. In a crime movie, you either have to care about the victim, or you have to want vengeance on the bad guy. Gone Baby Gone has neither. We know nothing about the little girl, and her mother is a coked out criminal that doesn't give a damn about her kid (except in one extremely bad scene, where the uncaring mother completely goes against type and has a good stage-cry).

Clint Eastwood directed another movie based on a book by Dennis Lehare. It was called Mystic River, and though I didn't like it, I could see how people did. See Mystic River before you see Gone Baby Gone, and perhaps you can use the experience as a film class learning lesson in how not to make a dark crime drama.

Otherwise, the experience is a complete waste.

Photos: Yahoo Movies