Gone Baby Gone movie review & film summary (2007)

This could become a franchise, if we didn't start grinning at their claims to be basically amateurs. In "Gone Baby Gone," Ben Affleck, making his debut as a director, assumes we haven't read the four novels, approaches Patrick and Angie head on and surrounds them with a gallery of very, very intriguing characters. He has his brother Casey and Monaghan play babes in the deep, dark woods, their youth and inexperience working for them as they wonder about what veteran cops don't question. The result is a superior police procedural, and something more -- a study in devious human nature.

I know, the title sounds like the movie should star Bill Haley and the Comets. But there is a rough authenticity from the first shots, especially when we meet a woman named Bea McCready (Amy Madigan) and her husband Lionel (Titus Welliver), who don't think the cops are doing enough to track down her 4-year-old niece. They think people who know the neighborhood and don't wear badges might find out more. They're right.

The police investigation is being led by Jack Doyle (Morgan Freeman) of the Crimes Against Children police task force, who unlike a standard movie cop, doesn't resent these outsiders but suggests they work with his men Remy Bressant (Ed Harris) and Nick Poole (John Ashton). Not likely, but good for the story, as the trail begins in the wreckage of a life being lived by the little girl's single mother, Helene (Amy Ryan). She is deep into drugs, which she takes whenever she can sober up enough, and there seems to be a connection between her supplier and a recent heist of a pile of drug money.

Enough about the plot. What I like about the movie is the way Ben Affleck and his brother, both lifelong Bostonians, understand the rhythm of a society in which people not only live in one another's pockets but are trying to slash their way out. This movie and the recent "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" announce Casey's maturation as an actor, and it also proves, after her film "The Heartbreak Kid," (2007) that Michelle Monaghan should not be blamed for the sins of others. And when you assemble Morgan Freeman, Ed Harris, Amy Madigan and Amy Ryan as sidemen, the star soloists can go out for a cigarette, and the show goes right on. One reason crime movies tend to be intrinsically interesting is that the supporting characters have to be riveting. How far would Jason Bourne get in a one-man show?

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7s7vGnqmempWnwW%2BvzqZmq52mnrK4v46gpqedXZeuo8WMoKannV1nfXGD