Gone Baby Gone

Just got finished watching Gone Baby Gone, Ben Affleck's directorial debut starring his brother Casey, Morgan Freeman, Ed Harris and Michelle Monaghan. It's based on a Dennis Lehane novel (he also wrote Mystic River) and is a crime drama/thriller set in Boston.

I sought this movie out for two reasons. I read and loved Mystic River (Cam, perhaps you'll remember that I read the book in tech school!) so was intrigued to see another Dennis Lehane adap and also because of the buzz surrounding the performances of Casey Affleck and Amy Ryan (who's been nominated for an Oscar for this).

Having worked all day at Starbucks today (0800-1630), I was looking forward to coming home, sitting down (finally), relaxing and watching a movie I've recently downloaded and have been wanting to see for ages. It was between this and Across the Universe and, because Courtney wasn't overly-enthusiastic about seeing Across... I plumped for this.

First things first. From that somewhat long-winded introduction, you can probably guess that I liked this movie. And you'd be right. In fact, I have to say it's made it into my top 10 of the year (which I'm sure will be reedited once again when I see There Will Be Blood [on a side note, I'm starting to get afraid of building that movie up too much. Oh well.]).

I loved everything about this movie. Ben Affleck's unobtrusive direction...the use of the locales...the performances (ALL of the performances)...the cinematography (the shots of the ugliest parts of Boston being, whether unintentionally ironic or not, the most arresting)...the tone...and the way we're (the audience) made to make a choice at the end of what we'd do.

As I watched the movie, I remarked several things to Courtney. How I thought that some of the actors in the movie seemed too realistic to be actors and that I thought Ben, a Boston boy born and bred (oooh a bit too alliterative, there), probably used real people from the street. How the gritty portrayal of the seedier side of Boston reminded me of the Baltimore seen in The Wire (HBO's genius cop show). How there were no shouty histrionics from the characters as there were from some of the actors in Mystic River - a film I really liked anyway.

The point of this being that after I've watched a movie, I go to my review site of choice, Pajiba, to read up on what they wrote about it if I've forgotten (as was the case here). Never have my feelings about a movie been so in tune with another review. So much so, in fact that I'll stop here and direct you to their review as the reviewer, Dustion Rowles, says it better than I ever could...

At the end of the day...fantastic. Not to be missed.