After a long wait for and hyped reviews of the delayed directing debut from Ben Affleck Gone Baby Gone was simply an anticlimax.

Rating: 5/10 (22 January 2008)

After a long wait for and hyped reviews of the delayed directing debut from Ben Affleck Gone Baby Gone was simply an anticlimax. The movie drips with moral high ground and wooden speeches of main characters, some of whom although cast from the top layer of Hollywood, still do not manage to make us believe the candy sweet, naïve dialogues.
Casey Affleck playing the main lead is cast well if not through his family connections. He plays the young and street-wise detective on a search for a little missing girl. We are supposed to believe (unsuccessfully) that the case is solved in the middle of the movie, just to see it unravel in the next hour. A poor attempt at bad guy-good guy dilemma, Ben Affleck's movie stinks of American mass-denominator, though-shall-not-sin preaching.
The motive of child welfare seems to time well with Ben's own new baby theme, perhaps this was the reason why the story was so black and white. Great potential of this movie could have been exploited so much better in the hands of say, Clint Eastwood, but Affleck, like his protagonist, still has a lot to learn.
Visually the film is nothing special either. Sweeping shots of horizons, close-up speeches to lame music, sit more comfortably in 1998 than 2008. In some shots, the actors actually move away from the group as the camera moves onto their face and the music swells, and they proceed to give the God-bless-America-ish speech.
I do believe Affleck, the actor and director, rubbed enough shoulders in Hollywood to know better. Lets hope his next movie will prove that.