Colorful
Added 11/19/2009
I rather liked this film. It was colorful--both in the characters and in the lack of black and white--or perhaps at least a lower level contrast than much of what I'm used to.
Challenging, developed, well acted, but somewhat sloppily narrated. I don't know if this is the result of the script, the direction or production, but whichever the case, the film ends up bending over and whispering answers in your ear to questions you were just about to ask like the obnoxious couple three rows back in the theater. Not terrible, just a little distracting.
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Gripping Read Explores Heartbreaking Reality
Added 11/18/2009
When PIs Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro are asked by the McCreadys to find their four-year-old niece, Patrick or Angie turn them down. After all, the police are on the case and these seasoned PIs know the emotional price to pay if things turn out badly. But Beatrice McCready's refusal to accept no and other circumstances gradually cause a change of heart. The more questions Patrick and Angie ask, though, the more disturbing the situation, and the more dangerous the truth.
What starts as a straightforward plot in Gone Baby Gone, becomes an increasingly complicated story with every twist and turn. In part, this is a grim portrayal of life for some children in the real world, and if it wasn't for Dennis Lehane's elegant writing it'd be a hard novel to read.
As it was, it took me a long time to gather the courage to read Gone Baby Gone. The novel arrived on my TBR pile when my children were young. Now that they're 21 and 15, I felt ready to read Dennis Lehane, and I'm glad I did. Yes, the book was emotionally difficult at times, but the subject of child abduction was handled with passion, compassion, and a writing style that kept me turning the pages. People have recommended more of Lehane's books to me. This time, I won't wait so long to read them.
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I love kids
Added 11/8/2009
Due to the emotionally charged and physically graphic nature of this film you may think you know where it's going. You do, but you won't expect how you get there. What could have been a fairly compelling story about our apparent cultural dilemma on dealing with children whose parents refuse to manifests as a convoluted whodunnit. The commentary on children maintaining no value in our culture should be valid enough material to compose a meaningful story. It is thought-provoking but in theme only. The plot meanders. It's twists are not intuitive. Although the acting is well done the emphasis on integrity of Bostonian accents results in an incredibly slurred performance by most of the main cast. Through chewed words Affleck delivers an otherwise convincing Patrick Kenzie, though Monaghan never really established the relevance of Angie Gennaro. Her performance underwhelmed and her character advanced the plot none. If you want to see into the minds of those who hurt children and those who think they are protecting them from such, this film is interesting. Keep it free and just watch the news.
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Affleck Brothers No Match for Good Fiction
Added 9/16/2009
I remember my intrigue at Casey Affleck's character in Good Will Hunting how efficiently he played the part of the younger brother and his face registering with me. I knew I would see him again if for no other reason then that his brother, Ben and his buddy, Matt were making it big. Since then he has worked his way up the chart with parts of increasing weight. Now we are graced with the double debut of brother Ben's directing in a salable feature and Casey as lead in Gone Baby Gone.
I've had the good fortune to read several LeHane novels. Except for a few recent books, Mystic River among them, LeHane's stories involved an unlikely pair of investigators that have a long, sordid history in Boston. I missed Gone Baby Gone and for the sake of seeing the film version and this review I am glad I have not yet read it.
The film opens with Casey as Patrick Kenzie tooling through the streets of Boston, a cinematic tool that worked well in the development of the characters in Good Will Hunting but does nothing to establish the Kenzie character or a sense of the City of Boston. Instead the editor and director choose to idle on Casey Affleck's face and the simmering background of an aging Boston excessively and for no useful purpose.
LeHane's Kenzie/Gennaro series tells the story of Kenzie and his female partner Angela Gennaro, private detectives with a wide range of acquaintances from police detectives to the most heinous of Boston's underbelly. This is what puts them in the position they so often find themselves; doing the work that police could never get away with and solving the crime. This is an important point that fails to ever get established in the film. Both viewers who have read LeHane and those who have not are left asking several nagging questions; Who are Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro? Why do people hire them?
It is with this unexplained history that Kenzie and his platonic live-in partner, Gennaro waltz into the offices of cops, Remy Bressant and Nick Poole and lay down some ultimatums about mutual cooperation after the pair reluctantly agree to investigate the kidnapping of a neglected four year old daughter of lowlife drug addict mother. For the next hour Kenzie happens upon clues in the case and the cops essentially do nothing. Then comes the first ending, the part where Kenzie's voice over emotionally prepares the audience for the end by telling the "beginning of the end" story of Gennaro's break up with him. Another failing in the choices made by the director leaves us feeling nothing here because we never learned that there was relationship between the two. In the novels, Gennaro plays many characters to Kenzie, in this case she could have been eliminated and nothing would have been lost.
The movie doesn't develop the character of Remy Bressant, deftly played by Ed Harris, a cop with an apparent debt owed to the aging Police Capt. Jack Doyle, played by Morgan Freeman. Without the Bressant character there would be no story. The talents of both Harris and Freeman are wasted in this film.
Instead of developing any of the characters, scenes like when brother, Lionel McCready, confesses the life cycle of three shots of Cutty and a tall boy are used. These types of poor editing choices waste precious minutes of film time. Ben, as co-writer of the adaptation, is also responsible for dialog that is so bad in places it distracts from the movie experience. The scene between Kenzie and Gennaro talking philosophy was beyond believable. Right then and there, I imagined Ben and Casey quibbling over the conversation in real life. That was a distraction. Kenzie's apparent devout religiosity and moral code is not set up properly and the audience is left with trying to believe that an afterthought rather than a crucial element is the basis for the emotional and moral decision that is the climax of the story. Where a more adept director could have left me crying at the end of this movie I skipped out of the theatre without a shadow on my heart. I am not beyond giving Casey another chance to succeed in a starring role but I would advise him not to do it with brother, Ben.
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Very realistic and gritty story
Added 9/6/2009
Who would have thought Ben Affleck had talent?
As someone who is currently working a missing child case, I can tell you this is a most realistic movie. It stretches a bit with who ultimately did it (no spoilers) in the end, but the fuzzy line between right and wrong, what is good and evil, and what should be and what should not be done is done with finess and reality without any fancy action hero type silliness. The use of actual people from the street vs actors helped, and the real actors do a great job in keeping with character. Shows Missing Child stories aren't always so simple or so easy.
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