Gone Baby Gone

Gone Baby Gone

Directed by Ben Affleck (R) A green detective searches for a missing girl in Boston’s seedy underworld.

***

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Gone Baby Gone is “one case where nepotism pays off,” said Stephen Farber in The Hollywood Reporter. In this smart detective thriller, the Affleck brothers—Ben as director, Casey as star—succeed triumphantly. Ben and screenwriter Aaron Stockard have skillfully adapted a novel by Dennis Lehane, who also wrote Mystic River. Casey plays a “baby-faced detective” hired to find a missing girl. Usually rather weak and wiry onscreen, Casey gives one of the “strongest performances of his career.” He creates a lasting character and plausible hero who “proves to be tougher and smarter than he looks.” The authenticity of his character and of the film as a whole is strengthened by Ben’s deep-rooted relationship with his hometown. His film “captures the city’s unfathomable layout, intense tribalism, and the existential separateness of its neighborhoods better than Scorsese in The Departed,” said David Edelstein in New York. Gone Baby Gone is a strong directorial debut, but it’s hard to forget that Ben is better known for his life offscreen than his work onscreen. You can’t help but think he’s trying to prove something, said Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times. Occasionally, he tries too hard and ends up exposing his artistic insecurities. At these times, the film becomes “so self-conscious it actually detracts from the storytelling.”