Wretched and miserable.

Rating: 1/10 (4 April 2011)

I must admit, I have never rated Ben Affleck as an actor, but at least he does manage to speak in an intelligible manner. This is not the case with his little brother Casey, who is so urgently in need of diction lessons that I had difficulty understanding anything he said. Such was the extent of his ineptitude, that I was obliged to read the subtitles in French so that I could decipher his incoherent, garbled mumbling.
This dirty, seedy, depressing film, peopled with unpleasant individuals and peppered with foul language left me feeling sullied, and debased. The script, which felt contrived, was far too steeped in crude, base American "gutter talk" and contained more gratuitous expletives than I can remember in any film, even surpassing "Goodfellas", for example.
An "in your face", graphic representation of the low-life culture of Boston's seediest neighbourhoods; it makes for a miserable film which should be immediately consigned to the garbage bin, never to re-emerge. The only saving graces were the solid performances by Ed Harris and Morgan Freeman, who can always be relied upon to produce the goods.
Watching this film, and also Affleck's last film, Smokin' Aces (which was also atrocious to my mind) it is hard to believe that this is the same person who gave us such a magnificent film as Good Will Hunting in 1997, for which he wrote the script (together with Matt Damon), and for which he rightly received an Oscar.
Whereas Good will Hunting was a film to raise the human spirit, to restore faith in human nature's triumph over adversity, Gone Baby Gone is the exact opposite. It debases the human sprit, dragging us down to the lowest common denominator, where phrases stuffed with foul expletives are the height of eloquence; where the main characters have a vocabulary of no more than a few hundred words, and where depravity, cruelty and perversion are the norm.
Having swallowed the hype surrounding this film, I had been really looking forward to seeing it. The great Ben Affleck's directing debut, the coincidental parallels with the "Missing Maddie" case in Portugal, etc. However, it didn't take long for disappointment to set in - closely followed by disgust.
No, I didn't like this film very much, and the sooner Hollywood stops making films like this, the better. I suggest that you spend your money on a bite to eat and a beer instead. I for one needed a drink afterwards to wash away the foul taste that this film left in my mouth