Gone Baby Gone, He Said

The right ingredients make the best dishes, but you need the right cook to make it all come together. It's not often you have the cook as one of the indispensable quality ingredients. Ben Affleck is a middlin' good actor and a first class writer. Add to the list director and if Gone Baby Gone is representative of a presumptive career, I'd say a damn good director. As an ingredient Mr Affleck got his start in the movie business as the writer of Good Will Hunting which is becoming, and deserves to be, a classic coming of age tale about a couple of South Boston kids. Writing the screenplay for Gone Baby Gone, Affleck is adapting the the book of Dennis Lehane. Affleck has done a masterful job of taking, what is always a great story from Lehane and bringing it to life on the screen. His decision to direct the film, Affleck has to be compared favorably to the guy who last tookLehane to the screen with Mystic River, Clint Eastwood.

There is nobody in this film that doesn't give us a great performance. Affleck does us a great favor by casting his brother Casey Affleck as the young local private detective. Casey does an outstanding job of portraying the guy who is trying so hard to clear away the slime and pays the price for trying to do the right thing. Rejecting the obvious out, of going along to get along, he loses everything but his self respect He's the son you hope you raise and the sap the world shits on.

The other ingredients are at least as important. I've never seen a movie that Ed Harris didn't make better just by being in it. It makes no difference if he carries the film, as in Pollock or has a bit part like The Hours, Harris crafts a version of a character that is compelling and magnetic. Harris seems to draw everyone around him toward the message his role is suppose to convey without being obvious.

Morgan Freeman slides in and out of this story like a storm cloud on the horizon that threatens, but fades from consciousness until it's on top of you. Freeman has such great range. He plays some of the meanest guys walking to God and he does with a subtle and convincing manner that defies description. Few actors can shed a characters facade of goodness to reveal the true evil lurking behind as well as Freeman.

Amy Ryan is like a lot of actors today in that we've seen her work many times on Law and Order et al. But these appearances are not as note worthy since they are fleeting and quite honestly taken for granted. Than she gets this opportunity and hits it out of the park. She plays the dope ridden survivor mother of the child who is kidnapped. This has to be one of the great roles of her life and she doesn't waste the opportunity. She gives rise to hatred and disgust of her callow disregard for her baby and her selfish need for drugs. Than she is throwing a switch we begin to see why and how she is the way she is and we reach out to her in sympathy. And than as quickly as her five minutes of fame dissolves she shows us what she is worth and our sympathy is wasted because she is not capable of being anything other than the user she is.

The drama of the search for the missing child takes us through the wrong side of society. The grit and reality of life, as all to many of us are forced to live, is exposed like an open wound. The users and abusers switch back and forth in their roles in a desperate attempt to survive in a culture where survival is everything. Affleck doesn't cushion the blows or try for the Hollywood ending. This is edgy gritty stuff and if your a viewer that likes things ending in neat resolution, shop elsewhere.