Surprisingly Great Moral Story

Rating: 10/10 (24 February 2008)

Wow, just wowI did not expect Ben Affleck to be such a potent film director. His acting was just mediocre at best for me so I avoided this because of that, a little biased on that count. Nevertheless, he proved me very wrong. He crafts a fascinating tale of a detective hired to find a missing child whose mother is a cokehead. It seems a bit offish at first why he would take this job, but the pleas of the sister are quite convincing. With the whole police force looking it looks like he is not needed, but as it turns out he is the key to it all. Things are not what they appear at all and that slowly becomes apparent despite best intentions. What drew me in so well to this film was the main character played brilliantly by Casey Affleck. He is soft-spoken, but seemingly confident and yet humanly afraid. His sense of right and wrong is what I liked most though. It was such a sincere performance. Add to that a great story full of gray areas through which this character has climb and it stands as one of the best of the year.
Spoiler Alert: What struck me as so great was that it not only unraveled like a very good mystery, but all that it was hauntingly real bringing back all these news reports of missing children and the tragic endings to those tales. In fact, he becomes involved in a similar spin-off tale with a tragically killed child, which eventually leads to the unraveling of the original case. It would not have been possible without his moral compass as it were, which would not let it rest. Moreover, it was the rightness of the ending and the heartbreaking reality of who gets to choose that makes this such a great film to me. He does the right thing and yet loses practically everything from his partner to the money, but it feels so right and he knows it.
Great film