It seems that Ben Affleck has spent his film career on the wrong side of the camera. All that time he was delivering often mediocre, sometimes just plain awful, performances he could have been behind the camera with the director’s cap on. He, in his directorial debut, has produced something taut, affecting, and often downright thrilling with a stellar cast (and performances) to boot.
Based on the novel by Dennis Lehane, the author of Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone follows two private investigators who are hired to search for a missing four-year old girl and in doing so it has an affect on them both personally and professionally.
Gone Baby Gone may not have the emotional gut punch that it could have had, and that Mystic River did have, but it’s nevertheless an affecting film, sometimes subtle while at others fairly brash; it sways from both extremes throughout and catches an almost perfect balance of the two. It’s not only an emotional drama but it’s also a fine police procedural; information heavy at points and you’ll need to keep your wits about you when the inevitable twists and turns crop up. It’s here where one of the film’s primary strengths lies – you think you’ve got a hold of what’s going on, you think you get the bigger picture but just as soon as you think you’re savvy the film pulls the rug from under you and sets you on a path to work things out almost all over again. It’s got a creatively complex plot to rival the most memorable films in that area and an outcome which will leave you mulling it over for days afterwards.
The film feels mature in nature, not only in its tackling of difficult and sensitive subjects but just in the overall tone of it. It has so many layers that get peeled away as the film progresses and it leaves you guessing until it’s absolutely necessary to give the pay off. And in its ending it’s both satisfying but at the same time it’s not happy or comfortable in its totality. There are parts, yes, which a lot of people will take joy from but overall it leaves some questions unanswered and dilemmas left unsolved. This is what sets Gone Baby Gone apart from other similar films – it doesn’t tie everything up with a big bow by film’s end, it presents complex moral dilemmas for both the characters and the audience to deal with and it leaves you affected and thinking about it even after you’ve long finished watching it.
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