Who'd ever think that "Ben Affleck, director" would turn out to be a good thing?

Rating: 7/10 (13 July 2011)

In his directorial debut, Ben Affleck wraps the mystery of a missing child in the social dysfunction of Boston's white underclass to produce a haunting tale of the choices people make and the choices the refuse to consider.
Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) is a private detective. He and his live-in girlfriend, Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan), specialize in missing persons. Usually that means people who are missing in the sense that they've skipped out on their debts, but then they're hired to find the missing daughter of Helene McReady (Amy Ryan). Helene's not the one who hires them, though. She's a boozy addict and the sort of mother who leaves her child locked inside a car on a hot day. It's Helene's brother and sister-in-law (Titus Welliver and Amy Madigan) who hire Patrick and Angie.
Working with detectives Remy Bessant and Nick Poole (Ed Harris and John Ashton) under the skeptical watch of Captain John Doyle (Morgan Freeman), Patrick and Angie plunge into a world of drug dealers, child molesters and the Irish Omerta code of ethnic white Boston. And when you think their investigation is over, it's really just beginning.
The society of working class Boston is at the heart of Gone Baby Gone. It's a world that is rarely seen in popular culture, unless it's being laughed at on Jerry Springer or Maury Povich. These are people who exists very much like their ancestors did in Europe hundreds of years ago, living their entire lives inside a small geographic area and seeing everyone from the outside as out to get them. Patrick Kenzie is essentially a white version of Shaft whose connections and upbringing allow him to glide through ethnic white Boston in a way the police can't.
Director Affleck handles the film's multi-layered mystery with a fine hand and structures the story so his actors have more to do than serve The Almighty Plot Hammer. His direction is a bit more mannered here than in The Town, befitting a slightly less confident storyteller, but he effectively blends his vision with the strong performances of his cast.
There are only two flaws to Gone Baby Gone, one minor and one not so much. Casey Affleck looks far too young to be Patrick Kenzie. Even if the ages of the actor and the part technical match up, someone like Patrick should be far more weathered and worn than the fresh faced Affleck. The movie even explicitly acknowledges that, though such recognition doesn't change the noticeable contrast. The other problem is that Gone Baby Gone is ultimately about two extreme decisions, only one of which fits the character who makes it. The decision is defensible within the context of the story, but it doesn't make sense for the character. Without giving too much away, someone who pals around with drug dealers enough that a dealer will do him a significant favor for friendship's sake is not someone who's going to adopt an absolutist moral view on anything. This off-note in an otherwise compelling tale robs it of some of its emotional impact.
With Gone Baby Gone and The Town, Ben Affleck has established himself as potentially one of the best filmmakers of his generation. We'll have to see if he can grow from here or if he'll settle for being something like the Woody Allen of Boston-based dramas.