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Gone Baby Gone
A child is missing. Little Amanda McCready was left alone in her apartment. Her mom, Helene (Amy Ryan) was nearby with a friend, she says. Her aunt and uncle (Amy Madigan and Lionel McCready) were just next door. Boston's finest are mobilized but clues are in short supply. The aunt shows up on the doorstep of Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro (Casey Affleck and Michelle Monaghan), private investigators. They're reluctant - especially Angie, who knows these cases often don't come with a happy ending - but they agree to do what they can.
The biggest obstacle is also the obvious starting point: Helene. She's not just upset, she's hostile, and it turns out, a coke-head. Worse, she's lying about her whereabouts the time Amanda disappeared. The second of Dennis Lehane's best-selling crime novels to make it to the big screen (the first was Clint Eastwood's Mystic River, and a third is on its way soon from Martin Scorsese), Gone Baby Gone reaches the UK after a delay of several months in respect to the high feelings inspired by the Madeleine McCann case. Ironically the postponement makes it hard to see the film without thinking of Shannon Matthews. The issue of class is never far away. Patrick is a guy from the neighbourhood. He remembers Helene from his school days, knows the right bars, has connections. He even knows a gangster by the name of "Cheese". But he's no longer one of them, if he ever was. He's moved onwards and upwards, and he's resented for it.
In one of the movie's best scenes, he visits Helene's local bar and starts asking questions. There's a missing child at stake, you might expect some cooperation. Instead he finds insults, threats and intimidation. At the same time, Patrick struggles to be taken seriously by those higher up the social ladder, in particular the police detectives he works alongside (they include Ed Harris and Morgan Freeman as the head of the missing child unit). Their condescension is expressed in comments about his boyish looks and short stature. This works for the story by fuelling Patrick's anger and determination, characteristics that will see him take this case much further than even he expects. Casey Affleck's performance is one of the movie's pillars. Amy Ryan's Helene is another. Fans of HBO's The Wire will recognise her; she also had small roles in Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, Dan in Real Life and a more significant part as the mom in Keane. Ryan is in her late 30s, but there's still a girlish glint in her eyes that hints at recklessness and irresponsibility. She's a user in more ways than one, and even her brother admits she's an unfit mother. But that's not to say she doesn't love her child. This is a vivid, startling, troubling performance, a layered and complex portrait of a simple, unsophisticated woman.
The movie's other great strength is its sense of place. I haven't mentioned the direction until now, but Ben Affleck - yes, that Ben Affleck - redeems his faltering career with his work behind the camera here. A Bostonian himself, Affleck puts his local knowledge to good use. Shots clearly snatched, guerilla style, from the street really make this movie come to life. The faces, the stoops, the seen-better-days sidewalks and store fronts, all these things ground Lehane's sometimes over-complicated plotting into an unmistakable reality. Of course his own semi-detached relationship with his home town mirrors Patrick's mixed feelings. Affleck doesn't try to pump this up into the epic tragedy Eastwood aimed for in Mystic River. Instead he delivers an unpretentious, gripping mystery thriller with enough terse character detail to tease out the story's moral quandaries. It'll be interesting to see what these Affleck boys come up with next. Tom Charity Titles related to this articleRelated/similar articles
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