good murky crime drama

Rating: 8/10 (21 June 2014)

It's a lower class Boston neighborhood. There's a little girl missing and her mother is Helene McCready (Amy Ryan). Lionel (Titus Welliver) and Bea McCready (Amy Madigan) hire P.I. couple Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) and Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan) to find her. They normally don't do these types of cases. However the case isn't all that simple. Helene is a drug addict. Police captain Jack Doyle (Morgan Freeman) is in charge and doesn't care for the newbies. Remy Bressant (Ed Harris) and Nick Poole (John Ashton) are the cops running the case. Soon they discover that Helene had ripped off a drug dealer named Cheese.
Ben Affleck has a real eye and ear for these characters. This is a good murky crime drama. Better still, Casey Affleck gives a real break out performance. Amy Ryan is just as good as the white trash mother character. I'm only disappointed with Michelle Monaghan. She's a little stiff and couldn't dig deeper than what's on the surface. I wish they let her pull a knife at least. I like that the story isn't a straight line. The story takes a break in the middle and it has some good twists.