GONE BABY GONE

I love the hell out of crime films, but I’ll readily admit it’s one of the more tired genres in cinema. Everyone (male directors especially) thinks they can do a good one, but for the most part they just want to make a film about guys talking some trash and shooting people. At their best, though, crime stories have the potential to be great American morality plays, which put a man up against the worst of humanity and watches him wrestle with it.

At its best, Gone Baby Gone does just that. There are some great moral quandaries put to our hero, Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck), and he reacts in new and interesting ways to them (well, new and interesting for modern, mainstream cinema anyway…man, I really am turning into a snob). But there are major structural problems with this film, from a cliché-to-cliché first act to a convoluted third.

Most of the press surrounding this film comes from it being Ben Affleck’s directorial debut (I’ve been following this film closely, but even I was still a little surprised to really see the words “Directed By Ben Affleck” up on the screen). Now…I’m a huge Ben Affleck fan, so the fact that he would turn out an impressive, humble debut comes as little surprise to me. It almost seems inevitable. Also, I remember him talking about the process of writing Good Will Hunting with Matt Damon, and saying they both realized early on that while they had a knack for character, they couldn’t plot their way out of a cardboard box. That’s the same problem he has here. Even adapting from a novel, Affleck’s screenplay (which he co-wrote with newcomer Aaron Stockard) has trouble getting from point to point, but there’s never a dull moment because he’s crafted exceptional characters, even if the police force was pulled from The Screenwriter’s Playbook (I watched Network the night prior, and all I could think of when Morgan Freeman came onscreen in this film was the assistant reading pitches to Faye Dunaway, all of which involved a “crusty-but-benign” authority figure).

I said about all the praise I could of Casey Affleck in my Assassination of Jesse James review, and while he isn’t better here (like I said, it’d be amazing if he ever tops that), he does show a lot of new shades, and it’s pretty great to see him talk trash and pistol-whip punks. The word that kept coming to mind while watching him was “visceral.” You don’t get that a lot in leads in crime films (“stoic” is a word that often comes to mind), and Casey puts up maybe the best reaction to a gun in his face since Philip Baker Hall in Hard Eight (yeah, more snobbery, referencing a film hardly anyone’s heard of, but screw you, it’s a great movie).

Michelle Monaghan should be in every movie. I almost went to see The Heartbreak Kid purely for her. Unfortunately, she’s shoved to the sidelines in this film, but even from there she’s charming as hell.

Ben’s strength as a character screenwriter continues as an actor’s director. Getting great, fresh performances out of his brother and Michelle Monaghan is one thing – they’re young and have a lot yet to prove. But finding new ways to make Ed Harris interesting? The guy’s about as good as they come, and while Remy Bressant isn’t a whole new cloth for him, there’s an edge I haven’t seen from Harris in some time. And that’s without even mentioning the great work Ben gets from Amy Ryan, who you know from…nowhere, but hopefully it won’t take long before she’s everywhere.

But there are problems. The first forty-five minutes or so are purely by-the-numbers detective/cop movie. There’s almost nothing new here besides that great Boston accent. Everything from the quarry until…I’d say about the last ten, fifteen minutes…fantastic. The story’s greatest strength is how it started one place, and when you assumed it was as wrapped-up as can be, it stayed right with the characters. It would’ve been easy for Ben to par down the novel’s story into a simpler kidnapping story, but he doesn’t. It was the right move, because everything involving the film’s main plot is where the screenplay falls flat; it’s the in-between, before-and-after moments we spend with the characters that are the most rewarding, and where those questions of morality get raised again and again and the world really does seem like a dark and hopeless place. But as the film reaches its conclusion, plot twist upon plot twist start to pile up, and it becomes too much. One too many stops on the way to the station. I have little doubt that these events were given time to breathe in the novel, but onscreen they’re rushed, and Ben and Stockard would’ve been better off reworking the way the mystery gets solved.

But on the whole, it’s a very solid genre film. Not a lot of new stuff, besides the continued revelation to the world of Casey Affleck’s genius, a firecracker of a performance from Amy Ryan, and Ben Affleck’s new career (I know people said the same of his incredible performance in Hollywoodland and that went nowhere, but I feel pretty confident this time). But there are great characters in the film that’ll get you through the first and third acts, and a second act you can’t help but be pulled in by.