Ben Affleck makes a confident debut as director in this powerful thriller, writes Michael Dwyer
BEFORE Brangelina, there was Bennifer. For all their glam trappings, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are respected as serious actors; when Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez got engaged, they were regarded as well matched in terms of their talent limitations. That verdict seemed sealed when they co-starred in Gigli(2003), a critically reviled box-office flop. Bennifer broke up soon afterwards.
Affleck bounced back two years ago with such an engaging portrayal of George Reeves (star of the 1950s SupermanTV series) in Hollywoodlandthat he earned the best reviews of his career and was named best actor at the Venice Film Festival. And the quality of Affleck's first feature as a director, Gone Baby Gone, firmly contradicts F Scott Fitzgerald's observation that "there are no second acts in American lives".
Gone Baby Gonefinally arrives here today, having opened in the US last October. That's usually a bad omen in the age of mass- released pictures, but this one has been well worth the wait. The fictional film deals with the search for a missing four-year-old blonde girl named Amanda McCready. In her name and physical appearance, the fictional Amanda resembles Madeleine McCann, the English girl who disappeared in the Algarve in May last year. Disney, the film's distributor in the UK and Ireland, felt it insensitive to release it so soon afterwards.
Based on a novel by Mystic Riverauthor Dennis Lehane, Gone Baby Goneis set predominantly in Dorchester, a run-down working- class area in Boston. Because the police are not trusted in Dorchester, Amanda's aunt and uncle (Amy Madigan and Titus Welliver) hire two small-time private investigators, Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) and Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan), who live together and know the neighbourhood.
Amanda's mother (Amy Ryan) is no help. A drug-addicted single parent, Helene is a human wreck. Her face lined with desperation, she is riddled with guilt for neglecting her child, yet seems far removed from reality. Ryan immerses herself in the role with a depth of conviction that brought her an Oscar nomination this year and is perfectly in sync with Affeck's naturalistic treatment of the morally complex scenario.
In an exemplary cast, the other remarkable performance comes from the director's younger brother, Casey Affleck, an Oscar nominee himself this year for his fascinating portrayal of the killer in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. In Gone Baby Gonehe plays the unlikeliest, least conventional of movie heroes - a wiry, pallid individual who reveals an unexpected toughness and determination that belies his boyish appearance and relative inexperience.
"Don't take on something you don't have the shoulders for," detective Jack Doyle (Morgan Freeman) warns Kenzie, but the PI and his partner, like the audience, have no idea just how challenging the case of the missing girl will prove.
In the screenplay by Ben Affleck and Aaron Stockard, the quest unhurriedly unravels a tangled web of corruption and betrayal, secrets and lies. There are a few narrative lapses along the movie's unpredictable route to resolution, but these are minor and pardonable in a thriller as bracing and compelling as this.
Steeped in a brooding, edgy atmosphere, Gone Baby Gonegains immeasurably from Affleck's eye for authentic locations in the city where he was born and raised. And he proves that there can be life after Beniffer, at least for him.
