Byzantine

Rating: 7/10 (1 April 2014)

Returning to the hermetic Boston neighborhoods of Mystic River, a familiar atmosphere of blight and hopelessness pervades Gone Baby Gone, which presents a morally byzantine world whose laws don't always protect the innocent, making the very idea of doing the right thing a vastly complex negotiation. The story concerns Casey Affleck as a private investigator hired by the family of an abducted child to augment the search. He's intent on cracking the case and restoring the child to her family, but the job proves much more troubling, revealing twists of motivation that severely test his steady, Catholic-informed code. Ed Harris is terrific as a passionate veteran of a child crisis unit. He and Affleck share a perfectly written scene following a bloody siege on a squalid house of horrors, in which Harris reveals unethical choices he's willingly made in the past to benefit at-risk children. This five-minute exchange unearths buried secrets and personal thresholds, forecasting on a character level the story's climactic decision. (Crucial is Affleck's rejection of Harris's moral relativism, a necessity in this ethical morass.) Although director Affleck stumbles somewhat in the third act, which employs one too many misdirecting flashbacks (and requires one to piece together some story threads almost by inference), the final 10 minutes are finely judged, including a devastating final shot. Films that approximate life's situational complexities are all too valuable, and this one is exceptional in that regard.