Baby Don't You Cry...Here Come The Afflecks To Save The Day

Rating: Null/10 (29 October 2007)

45 minutes into his new film, Gone Baby Gone, sitting in a darkened club with a thug across from him, his girlfriend and private detective associate to his right, Casey Affleck delivers one of the most threatening speeches placed on film this year. One wouldn't think so, given the boyishness of Casey, and his struggle to prove himself as a viable and relevant private investigator. The thug pulls a piece out on him, and threatens to kill him for negotiating the release of a little girl who is being held ransom, with which the thug claims he has no knowledge of. Patrick (Casey Affleck) calmly backs off, and engages in a sixty second monologue of the most amazing, threatening words of which I wish I could reproduce and yet am having trouble finding at the moment.
The opening shot of Gone Baby Gone thrusts you into a world that is cruel, unkind, and with no easy answers. As matter of fact, there were no answers. Only decisions, and living with the consequences of those decisions. Our protagonist is not a hero, though he is portrayed as one. The subject matter dealt with is not good versus bad, though it would seem as such on the surface. Life for the average joe is a cruel, unkind force to be reckoned with, those who give into addictions and cause others around them to be hurt. Yet when something catastrophic happens, it doesn't change you, or the type of person you are. It only changes the world around you, and your adjustments to that new world.
Casey Affleck has given his greatest performance to date. More accessible to his audience, more engaging than his character in The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford, and faced with a moral dilemma of how to distinguish if there really are opposites in a society which paints them as so. Taking comfort in his native Boston accent, Casey Affleck loses himself in his role. This was not the little boy I grew up watching in the Ocean series, the secondary character who shoots off wise cracking lines to his buddies. This was a young, fresh faced man faced with the impossible task of finding a little girl declared missing. He's loving, but cynical. He's tender, but tough, and not afraid to do what is necessary to get the job done.
Ben Affleck, of all people, has given me a film I've long desired this entire year. A smart, intelligent, realistic film that thrills and saddens. The script is amazing, the way everything falls into place by the end of its run time. My body was tense throughout the film. The acting of all involved was impeccable, from Morgan Freeman (whose character takes a surprising turn), to Ed Harris (the man is a chameleon), to the tragically underused Michelle Monaghan. He gives them the room needed to give their characters the dimension and emotion they deserve. If he can continue with this much care and detail to his films, he has a bright future behind the camera. Absolutely brilliant his first time out.
Much like life, this film leaves you with no answers as to what a good decision is or is not. The moral dilemmas we face everyday are embodied in Patrick Kenzie, and like him, we sit, dazed and confused, at the implausible and unbelievable atrocities that make up our society.