Review of Gone Baby Gone

It took me like two weeks or something to write this review and the more I look back on the movie, the worse it seems. I actually don't blame Ben Affleck for any lack in this case; he did the best he could with his first directing experience. It seems that this was just an impossible story to adapt into film and strange plot shifts and embarrassing acting doomed the project from the start.

Gone Baby Gone takes place in America's capital of crime, white trash, and nerve-racking baseball. Revolving around a brotherhood of Bostonians, including Ben and Casey Affleck, avid Boston crime writer, Dennis Lehane, and even a Wahlberg brother, Robert, the storyline is based on one (or two) child abduction(s) (or murders). Basically, a little girl named Amanda McCready (played by a mostly absent Madeline O'Brien) is kidnapped from her neglectful mother, Helene (Amy Ryan). Helene's motherly, though childless, sister-in-law hires private detective Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) and his burdensome assistant, Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan), who I will talk more about later, to augment the police investigation.

After a series of mostly fruitless interrogations with drunks and drug lords (all of whom Patrick Kenzie went to high school with), the kidnapping is pinned on a black immigrant named Cheese. Typical. The movie then climaxes and ends. Kind of.

For some reason, one of Kenzie's druggie ex-school-mates turns out to be the only hero in the film and takes Patrick on a drug deal to a house of child molesters and ex-cons, apparently under the assumption that the experience could lead to some resolution. No such luck. A second climax occurs, more people get shot, and the movie winds into a shallowly introspective journey involving Kenzie and a police detective from the McCready case, Remy Bressant (Ed Harris).

After talking with a drunken Bressant, Kenzie starts to question some of the details of Amanda McCready's disappearance and undertakes a sort of renegade investigation, receiving a badly-delivered line of disapproval from his unsupportive assistant/girlfriend.

It becomes clear that the plots which have thus far developed and concluded throughout the movie were mainly distractions. Or really drawn-out, roundabout ways of presenting one fact that might be important an hour later when the movie has become so clogged with crimes and culprits and motives that any explanation, no matter how outrageous, would be acceptable.

There is simply too much of Dennis Lehane's story to fit into two hours of celluloid. I think Gone Baby Gone is comparable to what would have happened had David Lynch tried to make Twin Peaks into a movie. There are too many plot twists, too many partially-relevant character side stories, and too many red herrings (a term I learned from the Hanna-Barbera cartoon, A Pup Named Scooby-Doo) to make a coherent storyline, let alone a succinct movie. It's hard for me to imagine even the novel this movie was adapted from being engaging. After the first pseudo-conclusion in the film, I wasn't too interested in seeing any more. I was satisfied with thinking the case had closed accurately and Ben Affleck just didn't know how to end a movie.

Convoluted plot line aside, Gone Baby Gone also sucked because of the ineptitude of every actor to be convincing (or to ennunciate). In fact, for me, the movie was ruined within the first 15 minutes because of Michelle Monaghan. With the alien-like collagen lips and eye area of Teri Hatcher and Ellen Pompeo (of Grey's Anatomy), Monaghan plays a pointless character who criticizes people who weren't fortunate enough to have a boyfriend who will give them a steady, respectable job. Delivering obvious lines with little emotion, Monaghan lets the audience know she disapproves of people who leave their kids in cars. Her character, Angie, is also a real downer for her boyfriend, Kenzie. More of an encumbering sidekick than a loving girlfriend, Angie makes hazardous comments to dangerous criminals, challenges Kenzie's ethics, and even tries to dissuade the McCready family from utilizing the couple's detective services. Way to keep the man who supports you from making money, judgemental bitch.

Casey Affleck is also disappointing, but probably only because I was so impressed with him in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. I guess he really does as good a job as anyone would have in that role. His emotions aren't really strong enough to overshadow the ubiquitous semi-important details of the plot, but I am uncertain whether that is good or bad. The main problems I have with the younger Affleck are his tendency to mumble all of his lines and his inconsistent and kind of hard-to-buy Boston accent, which I don't understand since he is a native of that city.

Morgan Freeman is in the movie, too, by the way. I honestly can't remember him showing one emotion throughout the entire film. Ed Harris is bland as well but manages to yell angrily on two occasions. The other actors are alright, though certainly not memorable. The only things I appreciated about the movie were the opening scene of streets in Dorchester and Amy Ryan, who, had she not been weighed down so heavily by sub-par co-stars and messy plot transitions, would have single-handedly made this movie worthwhile. Her portrayal of the working class druggie mother of an abducted girl is unfalteringly believable and it depresses me to think that she may not receive the accolades she deserves because of weaknesses in every other aspect of the film. It also depresses me to think that every other actor could still be so lackluster despite witnessing her obvious conviction.

Gone Baby Gone isn't poorly directed, necessarily. The writing is bad, but I blame that on the book being hard to adapt. Plot lines are connected only by brief, passing statements. Crimes are solved through unreasonable coincidences. Characters pass in and out of importance, and then back in. Without more of an emotional base (and I credit this deficit mostly to the actors and somewhat to the screenwriting), the film can only rely on a plot that can never be strong enough to engage audiences on its own.

I didn't completely dislike the movie. There were a few powerful scenes, some suspense, and one good actor, but overall, this story should never have been translated to film. For fans of Boston, complicated crimes, and decisions of unclear morality, read the Dennis Lehane novel. Or better yet, spend a few nights in Southie.