Answer lies in what happened to the Australian (Aboriginal) "Stolen Generations". What is it that the road to hell is paved with, again? WARNING: SPOILERS.

Rating: 9/10 (10 January 2009)

When you're a novice director, it helps to have an ex-studio honcho help you. Co-producer Alan Ladd.Jr had variously headed up Fox, MGM/UA, and his own The Ladd Company. However, a film still needs a strong screenplay......and the rest. GBG(2007) delivers all that at virtually stratospheric gravitas level.
Ben Affleck maintains a surprising pace in his directorial debut because he is both brave, and has a lot to tell. And maybe it's Ladd's influence, but GBG shows true "vision": the film's style of telling suits its subject-matter, and it poses its clever ideas audience-inclusively, without sugar-hit/adrenalin/overly-emotive score manipulations. Giving people exactly (and only) what they want is pandering; whereas offering them brands of antisocial insanity becomes unworthy of distribution.
Affleck certainly does not pander to anyone here. That was unlikely, since the Affleck brothers (as well as the original author) are all smart "Southies" from Boston's working-class Dorchester, where GBG is set. The director was certainly "writing what he knew" when he co-adapted the fourth of Dennis Lehane's pentology of private investigator novels with Aaron Stockard.
The opening documentary montage imperceptibly blends Affleck's fictional scenes on the street, thanks to his deft directorial hand. Patrick Kenzie's morose narration sets a sombre tone of survival in this harsh world of scarred people; the (real) montage had revealed a shocking number of wheelchair-bound, accident-prone gunshot victims.
The younger Affleck (Oceans' 11-13) is a revelation as the "31yr-old" PI, business-partnered with his live-in girlfriend Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan, Eagle Eye(2008)). Their relationship seems confusing until you realize that despite inexperience with serious missing persons cases, they're actually great at finding people desperate to disappear. So.....just like that, the writers turned their "liability" into advantage.
Kenzie's droning about the farcical police presence at the missing toddler's home cleverly draws us into his professional skepticism. Surprisingly, the police captain himself heads up the search. Capt.Doyle (the deeply trustworthy Morgan Freeman) promises dutiful police co-operation to these competing PIs by way of his detective Remy Bressant (Ed Harris).
The plot races ahead, in keeping with the speed of recovery being of essence in kidnapping cases. Layers of the shocking truth begin to peel away with the discovery that Amanda's mother Helene (Oscar-nominated Amy Ryan) is extremely "working-class", and is probably causally involved--as the intended target. Clever Kenzie misses nothing in his investigation of her, the local barflies, or Bressant.
Within 3days the case unfolds to a shocking apparent result, but no body is found, despite Angie flinging herself into a quarryful of water to save the little girl. Unfortunately we're never allowed to appreciate Angie's true desperation, because it implied the deeper story, so her/extra scenes were dropped--unbalancing the PI duo.
This reveals GBG's one flaw: Affleck's overeagerness to mire his audience.
The nighttime quarry scene wasn't staged well enough to properly hint the plot. Deliberately unlit and haphazard, it forced us to catch sight of Angie too late for our emotional involvement. As McTiernan admitted about HIS similar-case Russian cook in Hunt_for_Red_October(1990), the "seeding was frail". Audiences should have kept emotional pace with Angie our co-protagonist--or else why have her--but the need to confuse us overwhelmed the young director. (Taking your audience out of the movie is NOT THE SAME as having them give up hope for the kidnap victim!)
Nevertheless, Ben Affleck must be commended for his courageous choice of stalling the plot halfway. Of course, this occurs in Lehane's book, too, but Affleck is so confident that he has the film's second half return to the "same" insoluble Dorchester despondency with Kenzie's morose narration--lulling the audience into a false ignorance.
When the case re-ignites in a different direction, Kenzie can't resist walking alone into the home of a suspected paedophile. What happens next makes us question who, if anyone, should ever be allowed to carry a gun, yet some things still don't add up. Ever-vigilant, Kenzie drags his employer, little Amanda's uncle Lionel (Titus Welliver, he of the handlebar moustache), into the local pub for a confession.
Lionel's revelations constitute Lehane at his best, as the avuncular alcoholic finally falls off the wagon. His dialogue just gets more powerful the longer Lionel talks, since the plot now raises the dilemma of "mothercare" within harsh communities, when the mother is herself a product of generational poverty/neglect.
Rabbit-proof Fence(2002) punched out Australia's similar history in this regard; GBG(2007) now raises/augments the argument by reminding us of the consequences even WHEN we're "wise as serpents yet innocent as doves".
So it's breathtaking for a first-time director to tackle such a deep, structurally unusual film yet still get both story and execution close to perfect. GBG's vision and style, subcultural authenticity and devastating perspective make it far more deserving than the one Oscar nomination it failed to win. We are indebted to all three amazing writers; together they satisfyingly ask all the right questions, and galvanize the morose reality.
Their gutsy movie pulls no punches depicting this situation's moral inertia, either. A lesser film might not have known how to finish, but GBG's ending was always anchored by the reveal of underbelly subculture remaining more-or-less the same. Despite the family upheaval, little Amanda still loses. The film's deepest indictment of underbelly mothercare is represented by Helene's neglectful ignorance of her daughter's doll's name. Throughout the movie we know it as Mirabelle from news reports, until the toddler corrects her stunned babysitter in the very last scene. Such powerful writing is due no doubt to Lehane's previous years as a counsellor of abused children.
Everyone is superbly cast, but "Taggart"(John Ashton, Beverly Hills Cop(1984)) steals the show for simply not aging in 23yrs!.....The unexplained lack of Oscars still bothers me. Perhaps GBG's audiences (and critics) became uncomfortable stuck in their moral muddle, plus angry over being deliberately mired by the director, but other than its "obfuscation scene", GBG is pretty flawless. Thank you Afflecks, Lehane and Stockard, Alan Ladd.Jr, Jill Quigg, and Dorchester.(9/10).