On the whole it was a good film, but it could have been so much better

Rating: 6/10 (8 March 2014)

Sometimes it's difficult not to go into a film with high expectations and when I read the IMDb summary and saw its current rating I certainly expected an emotional and moving film, but sadly I didn't have these feelings during the film or after it ended.
OK, just to give a brief overview - 4 year old girl gets kidnapped and the family of the kidnapped girl are unhappy with the way that the Boston police are dealing with the kidnapping. Therefore, the little girl's family decide to hire 2 private detectives Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) and Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan) to investigate the kidnapping.
The main problem for me was the utter vileness of the little girl's mother Helen McCready and her sidekick. When Kenzie and Gennaro are asking her questions about her daughter she's uncooperative and unhelpful and deliberately makes life difficult for Kenzie and Gennaro. Why would you behave in that manner when someone is trying to help you find your daughter? Fair enough, we learn that she is a drug addict which explains her erratic behaviour, but I just found it hard to empathise with a character's cause when that particular character is so vile. The very fact that later in the film she does a complete U-turn from a drug addict to a seemingly loving and caring parent was admittedly nice to see, but it also wasn't entirely believable and also felt somewhat contrived. Her change in character just came out of nowhere and is one of those instances where audiences are just 'expected to accept it'.
The next problem we come to is Casey Affleck. I'm sorry but he was so wooden in this film. He seemed to have no emotional range and his irritating monotone voice just ended up getting on my nerves. One can assume that big brother Ben had a lot of influence on what goes on in this film as he was director and writer and I feel that may explain the reason that his little brother was cast in the lead role. This is something that should never have happened.
One aspect of this film that I liked was the writing; so we learn that chief of police Jack Doyle (Morgan Freeman) kidnapped the girl in order to give her a better life than her mother was able to give her. Now some people have criticised this as being a lame plot twist and poor writing, but I disagree and I happen to think that this is one of the strongest aspects of this film. The fact that this film is able to open up an entire moral argument at the end of the film is just genius. The very fact that this film poses many moral questions at the end can only be taken as a positive and I always feel that any film that leaves you asking questions at the end or raising moral objectives can only be taken as a positive thing.
Ben Affleck did manage to get quite a few things right; direction, cinematography, writing, and acting (for the most part) were all relatively good. Ed Harris is always watchable and put in another terrific performance as the corrupt police officer Remy Bressant. Morgan Freeman is also good fun to watch, but he didn't get as much screen time as I'd expected.
As previously mentioned, this film was a 'good' film that had the potential to be a great film. However, a couple of vile characters coupled with Affleck's wooden acting prevented it from being an excellent film. I felt no emotional connection to the film and found it hard to root for someone who was basically a 'selfish drug addict'. I'd recommend watching it, but it's only a 'weak' recommendation.