Nasty Realism in a Vivid Offputting Roar of Moral Dilemmas

Rating: 7/10 (17 July 2009)

Gone Baby Gone (2007)
Nasty Realism in a Vivid Offputting Roar of Moral Dilemmas
This is a penetrating experience if not a transcendent one. This cinema-verite dive into rough Boston trashy life, with only limited filmic gloss, as if a kind of documentary, is still clearly fictional and intentional in its scope. These are mostly horrid seeming people on the screen, yet we know them in real life, more or less, and we know they are not so horrid most of the time, that people have their troubles and their strengths. The problem, and the value, of Gone Baby Gone is that we are made to live with them for the entire movie. Even the good guy, the moral light (more correct than his girlfriend) played by Casey Affleck, is rough by necessity. The violence of language, of attitude, and with real bullets, never stops.
Or when it does stop, we are left with abusive parents, neglectful parents, child molesters, kidnappers, corrupt cops, drug kingpins, drug dealers, torturers, mindless murderers, and mindful murderers. I'm sure I've only touched on half of it, and yet we believe this kind of world is out there, and are thankful it's got limits, or at least that it doesn't brush against ours. Usually.
Affleck's character is a contemporary and very young private detective, Patrick Kenzie, and he sort of proves that the cool, hard talking, slow-paced film noir detective is no longer a reality (if it ever was, even potentially). Our new world reacts with too much immediacy, and murder is impulsive. People are so strung out, or so far into criminalilty, reactions are fast and violent. Kenzie's unflagging, show-no-fear approach, and his kindly but somewhat dull girlfriend sidekick, Angie, are the closest thing we have to decency, and we naturally relate to them. But what proves successful is not wits, not CSI cleverness and science, but personal connections and tough conversations, threats and pressure of one friend (so-called) against another, one cop against another.
The plot might at time seem to teeter, but hang in there, because it makes sense, even as it drops over the edge of probability. The twists keep you curious, but mostly it's the determination of Kenzie, driven by some need to succeed, to do the right thing rather than money, that makes you care. Oddly, I did care where he went with it, and worried for him. Affleck is the younger brother of the director, Ben Affleck, and the two of them seemingly have a rapport that centers the film. Morgan Freeman shows, by his sheer presence, what great acting is, and though his role is a cliché as a veteran cop, he pulls it off perfectly. Ed Harris, playing a more war-weary cop, is more complicated cliché, but with enough odd corners to his career, and enough intensity to his acting, we go with him the whole nine yards.
One unsavory character, the young druggie mother played by Helen McCready, is at times so perfectly played it's part of the success of the movie. At first I thought she was playing too stupid, and too callous (being the one we are meant to sympathize with) but gradually I see the depth of exactly that kind of person, and by the last scene I'm convinced completely, and all her earlier crying and not-crying makes her the half faux-victim, half selfish addict she really portrays.
What finally splits the movie is a moral choice that the viewers might make differently, and so ultimately the film goes somewhere beyond its own seedy example. And the ride there is really interesting and worth watching.