Gone Baby Gone Kicked Off Ben Affleck's Directorial Career In A Somber Fashion

Ben Affleck's career circa the mid-2000's was not in a happy place. A number of high-profile box office and critical duds like Gigli, Jersey Girl and Surviving Christmas had left his profile tainted and he would only appear on-screen in two movies (Hollywoodland and Smokin' Aces) in the five year period between 2004 and 2009. But in that time span, Affleck decided to reinvent himself as a director by adapting the first feature film screenplay he had penned since his breakthrough movie, Good Will Hunting. The movie he would make his feature film directorial debut on was Gone Baby Gone, a sobering drama that, to date, is his only directorial effort that he does not star in.

The honor of headlining this project would go to his brother, Casey Affleck, who here plays a younger idealistic private investigator by the name of Patrick Kenzie, who's handed a case larger in scope than any he's handled before; finding the human being whose kidnapped a young girl. Along with his girlfriend and fellow investigator, Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan), the two begin diving into the child's disappearance with assistance from long-time officer Remy Bressant (Ed Harris). Patrick's quest to help solve the mystery behind this kidnapping leads him to going deep into a web of espionage and conspiracy.

At the start of this story, Patrick isn't so much a naive person as he is one that has been shielded from the darker and more insidious individuals that folks like Remy deal with on a daily basis. Gone Baby Gone smartly doesn't paint Patrick as neither solely a paragon of good nor an overly uptight fellow who just needs to learn to bend the rules or something like. Much more effective drama is wrung out of the story simply following along as a bipartisan witness as Patrick discovers each new layer of deceit in this kidnapping plot. There's always a new twist around the corner regarding the allegiances of the people Patrick surrounds himself with in Gone Baby Gone and they're all existing solely in an attempt to further throw the protagonist's entire moral perception of the world out of whack.

Casey Affleck really helps sell that pivotal theme of the screenplay thanks to a strong performance that proves that his excellent turn in Manchester By The Sea nearly a decade after Gone Baby Gone's release was no fluke. Affleck sells the determined nature of Patrick, a guy who wants to do what's right and help this daughter get home equally as well as him playing the more bamboozled side of this individual as he comes to terms with the level of treachery he's been embroiled in. Surrounding Affleck are two long-standing acting legends, Ed Harris and Morgan Freeman, both of whom turn in strong work, most notably Freeman whose able to prove that, despite satirizing his gravitas-covered persona in so many films over the past decade, he can still bring an incredible amount of weight to his dialogue delivery that knocks you right off your feet.

I'd be curious if the residents of Boston, Massachusetts care for how they're portrayed in Ben Affleck's directorial efforts, as both this and The Town portray the town as a crime-ridden area filled with seedy individuals. Perhaps, just as Richard Linklater doesn't pull any punches in his uber-flawed portrayal of Texas in some of his movies, Ben Affleck is more interested in telling dramatically compelling tales set in Boston, Massachusetts that don't solely serve as an extended postcard for the environment they're taking place. While the glamor-free depiction of the city fits smoothly into the story, weirdly, some of the pervasive swearing, most notably in an early tavern-set interview scene, almost teeters over into the point of self-parody at certain points in the story.

Similarly threatening to break the atmosphere of the movie are some overly show extended helicopter birds-eye view shots that seem at odds with the smaller-scale filming style of the rest of the movie, though those are an odd anomaly in a film that's otherwise got some high-quality camerawork and similarly gets top marks in the editing department. It's impressive that Ben Affleck has this level of assuredness both in the movies visuals and in executing the various gripping twists and turns in the script of Gone Baby Gone considering this is his very first motion picture. No wonder Affleck was able to secure plenty of high-profile directorial work after this debut feature considering that Gone Baby Gone is an engrossing film that plops both the viewer and the lead character into a bleak world of unpredictableness and intrigue.