Review: Gone Baby Gone

Gone Baby Gone is coming up to 13 years old soon, and has been firmly rooted in My Top 10 Of All-Time since I first saw it not long after it came out, despite its heavy subject matter I try to rewatch it as often I as I can because even after all the times I have seen it, I still can’t decide if the moral conundrum at the end went in the right direction and I love it for sticking with me in that way.

The film opens three days after the disappearance of Amanda McCready, a four year old girl from a run-down Boston neighbourhood, with the police finding no leads to go on and Amanda’s junkie mother Helene not being help, Amanda’s aunt Bea and Uncle Lionel go to Private Investigators Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennero to hire them to scout the neighbourhood and find any lead they can. Despite missing kids not being their main job, they agree to take on the case, teaming up with veteran detective Remy Bressant and police captain Jack Doyle to track down where Amanda has gone.

Where the film shines is in how it translates this mystery on-screen, what initially starts playing out as a drug-lord kidnapping in revenge for stolen money takes a drastic turn about half-way through, sending the film into a different, much darker direction before coming back around to tie everything together, then going round AGAIN to fit in a final twist before the end. There’s something to be said about the way to film sets itself up as a simple kidnapping mystery, building in a drug mule revenge plot then twisting the film into a morally complex and highly debatable storyline, the way it all ties together, with simple off-hand comments that can pass you by on a first viewing suddenly having a big impact the second time round. It’s very impressive and easily one of my favourite crime plots I’ve seen, as I said at the beginning I’m still not 100% on if the characters made the right choice at the end but with enough grey morals painting this entire film, regardless of what side you fall into its the best choice this film could’ve made for an ending.

Acting was solid throughout with the film taking on the tried and true technique of populating the world with small, memorable roles, each one more depraved than the last. Edi Gathegi sets a violent stage in his one scene as Haitian drug-lord, Jean ‘Cheese’ Baptise, making it clear that he’s not afraid of the police and he’s not afraid to put fear into his customers. Mark Margolis and Matthew Maher make the screen grimier in the film’s second half as an old drugged-up prick and a paedophiliac creep, Maher especially tying into the film’s darker edge and morally grey themes.

On the other side of the law, Morgan Freeman has a small but pivotal role as Jack Doyle, a police captain for a unit dedicated to crimes against children, brought on after the murder of his own daughter several years ago. While far from the biggest role of Freeman’s career, he gives Doyle a quiet dignity that becomes important to the film later on. Ed Harris plays the more active Remy Bressant, a Louisiana native and veteran cop who, while initially hostile to Patrick and Angie, slowly comes to tolerate them if not fully respect them. This is a solid role for Harris who gives Remy the stance of hard-ass, the cop who’ll go the extra distance, who’ll rough up a suspect, who’ll bend a few rules – even admitting to it once to Patrick – in order to make sure the right people are behind bars. Likewise to Doyle, Remy has an important role to play in the story and Harris keeps things close to the chest, but allows his place in the film’s ending to not feel out of character.

Amanda’s homelife proves just as dirty as the rest of Boston with her mother Helene – played exceptionally well by Amy Ryan – toeing the line between strung-out, junkie bitch who can’t look after her child, and a worried mother, pleading to have her daughter returned to her. You’re never sure where you stand with Helene, and that’s by design but Ryan has this knack of making you despise Helene for being distant, uncaring and mean, only to have you immediately sympathise with her when she’s faced with the very real prospect of losing her daughter. Amanda’s other family members aren’t as ambiguous but carry their own baggage, Helene’s brother Lionel is a 23 year sober recovering alcoholic, now a gentle, loving uncle to his niece, his wife Bea is a much harsher woman, not afraid to call out Helene on her shit and is the one who called Patrick and Angie to begin with. Both of them are good, desperate people who want the best for Amanda and are willing to do anything to get her back, but those good intentions aren’t as pure as you’re led to believe and ties in perfectly to both the film’s storyline and its main themes.

The main duo of Patrick and Angie carry the film, and even then it’s Patrick that gets the main focus, but its still a solid performance from Michelle Monaghan and I having really paid attention this time, I found her to be a much more important character than I realised, thematically more than anything else. The whole film has this grey, ambiguous tone to it but Angie has a very black-and-white view of the world, its subtle at first, the way she immediately wants to help despite kids not being her or Patrick’s main way of working, how she rolls her eyes at Helene and Patrick casually throwing about the word ‘Faggot’ – it’s never stated but I imagine that Angie wasn’t a Boston native. But as the film goes on the more you realise that she’s not cut out for this world, sometimes it works in her favour, she tries to save a child with no regard for her own safety which is a heroic and noteworthy act, but at others there’s layers of context that she seems to miss, case in point when it comes to executing a child killer she’s all for pulling the trigger, ignoring the legal system and even the psychological damage to the executor. None of this is to say she’s a bad character, in fact I think she’s easily the most likeable person in the entire film, but the way she’s written has me wondering if she’s our audience surrogate, she believes what the audience believes and it’s up to Patrick and the rest of the film to show that there’s more nuances to life than we first see.

Star of the show is easily Casey Affleck as Patrick, between this and Assassination of Jesse James he showcased a great amount of talent in 2007, and Patrick still stands out as one of his best roles, right from the start we get the sense of who Patrick is, he’s been around the block, seen a few people, made friends with the wrong types but knows when and when not to start busting heads. He fits right into the Boston neighbourhood, having grown up in the same square mile as Amanda and everyone around him, so when Lionel and Bea ask for his help he knows who’ll point him in the right direction, even if others don’t want anyone talking to the cops. He’s a guy that’s not afraid to put himself into dangerous situations, knowing he can bust his way out regardless, but the things he sees on this case put him into a very difficult situation, places where he needs to prove his bite is as bad as his bark and he questions a lot about himself afterwards. Affleck has that ability to really hone in on the inner workings of Patrick, you can see on his face the thousands of thought processes that go through his head before he makes a decision and you understand how he ends up where he does, which is vital because its Patrick’s decision in the finale that leaves you wondering even though its the most in-character choice he could’ve made and Affleck’s performance sells the hell out of it, down to the flashes of doubt he has even when he believes he’s in the right.

Directing duties fall to the older Affleck with Ben taking his first feature gig and immediately running out the park with it, say what you will about Affleck as an actor but after my first viewing of this I instantly took notice of him as a director. For one thing Affleck being from Boston, he knows just how fucked-up the neighbourhoods can be and he doesn’t shy away from that, showcasing the grotty and the grimy parts of Boston, where people live in three-decker houses with neighbours they hate, where people can squat in empty shitholes and shoot up to their hearts content, this is an ugly side of Boston but it factors greatly into the fear of something happening to Amanda, you don’t know what’s lurking round the corner but you can tell it’s nothing good and the further the film goes, the more you have that unease about where it can go next. Seriously the Bathtub Scene is not something I was expecting to see and it still ranks as one of the more horrifying moments I’ve watched.

Despite that though, Affleck uses the shit-end of Boston to his advantage to build some solid tension, an early bar-scene puts Patrick and Angie in a very dangerous situation until Patrick turns things around in slightly humorous fashion, a trip to a junkie den dissolves into a Mexican standoff and the following gunfight with strung-out coke-fiends and no visible light source creates a very creepy atmosphere that borders on horror movie at times. Even the finale, with no real threat to life has this undercurrent of threat with a ton at stake should the wrong decision be made, this is a tense movie when it wants to be and showed a taste of what Affleck could do leading into The Town.

What really makes this film for me though, is the level of maturity shown, between Affleck’s direction and the script, nothing here talks down to the audience or makes light of the situation, child abduction is all too real – the film had to be postponed a few months in the UK due to the similarities to the Madeline McCann case – and the film never takes that for granted, showing the sense of community that comes from a child missing from the neighbourhood, as well as the psychological impact it can have on those closest to the victim. This maturity also translates to how the story plays out, for those paying attention you can catch hints of what’s to come and even then the film trips you up with its secondary reveal but it never gives you an easy answer, you see the journey and understand how we got to the destination, but it doesn’t tie things off nicely with the final scene, hell the final spoken word of the whole film leaving you questioning everything you’ve seen, this is a film that has stuck with me for 13 years and still makes me think every time I see it.

I absolutely adore Gone Baby Gone, from its intelligent, twisting storyline that still sticks to my mind even now, to its solid acting across the board with special mentions of Affleck, Monaghan and Ryan, each bringing a different element to this dark tale, and Ben Affleck’s first directing job, having the guts to tackle something this morally ambiguous and pull it off as well as he does. Easily one of the best modern cop films we’ve seen and one that deserves your attention.

9/10