Just like life, there are no easy answers to be found in Gone Baby Gone. Here is a thriller that actually manages to thrill and, most importantly, keep you guessing all the way to the end. It also has a lot to say about a lot of matters. Ben Affleck makes his directorial debut with this film (he co-wrote the screenplay also), and shows a sure hand right off the bat in juggling a complex storyline, multiple characters, and numerous twists that never seem cheap or out of the blue. Everything flows naturally, and it does not take the audience long before they are completely absorbed. This is masterful work all the way around, and is easily the best film of the year so far.

As the film opens, a media circus is just beginning in the city of Boston when a 4-year-old girl named Amanda McCready (Madeline O'Brien) is abducted from her home late one night. The little girl's concerned Aunt (Amy Madigan) and Uncle (Titus Welliver) decide to take matters into their own hands somewhat, and approach a private investigator who specializes in missing person cases named Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) and his girlfriend/business partner Angie (Michelle Monaghan from The Heartbreak Kid). Right from the start, Patrick comes across some information that does not match up with the story being told by Amanda's mother, Helene (Amy Ryan), and the deeper he digs, he slowly learns the truth about Helene's shady past of drug dealing. Fearing that one of Helene's past associates may have taken Amanda, Patrick and Angie team up with some local law officers, including Police Captain Jack Doyle (Morgan Freeman) and Detective Remy Bressant (Ed Harris). What Patrick discovers during the course of the investigation will not only effect him emotionally, but also make him question everything around him.

Based on a novel by Dennis Lahane (Mystic River), Gone Baby Gone is a movie that knows how to keep us guessing, and in such a way that the movie never once feels like it is toying with us or waiting to pull the rug out from under us. The movie starts out simply enough, as Amanda is taken from her own bed late one night, and the police arrive to investigate. And yet, this is more than a mere mystery film. It doesn't seem like it at first, but we slowly begin to realize that the movie is much more interested in the mystery of the characters involved in the investigation, rather than the mystery of the missing child. There are a lot of questions about morality and, as mentioned earlier, the movie intentionally gives us no easy answers or sometimes no answers at all, leaving us to debate the characters' decisions at the end of the film. The screenplay by Ben Affleck and first time screenwriter Aaron Stockard is complex, but never overly so, allowing us to discover the pieces of the puzzle along with the characters. It never overly simplifies things, never over explains itself, and it never hits us over the head with its own revelations. Each new addition to the plot is carefully placed so that it's not glaring or out of place.

I always get a wonderful sensation inside of me when I know I'm watching a great movie, and I got that feeling early on here. The movie has a wonderful sense of the local Boston culture, and most importantly, it puts us right into the action by making us feel the same things that the lead characters do. Both Patrick and Angie are relatively amateurs when it comes to this game, and they quickly find themselves wrapped into something much bigger than they could have ever imagined. The movie does a great job of displaying a sense of hopelessness and being in over your head. When Patrick is forced to make some very difficult decisions throughout the film, and question everything he knows about himself and the case he's investigating, we find ourselves thinking and feeling the same things right along with him. This does not come across as a film made by an actor taking his first shot at directing. Ben Affleck has obviously learned his lessons well from some of the directors he's worked with in the past, and gives this movie the look and precision of a veteran filmmaker. More than that, he never loses sight of his characters. All of their decisions, even the ones that may seem questionable to us, seem natural. Nobody seems to be working for the sake of the plot, and everybody fits into the plot in their own way. This is difficult to achieve in a mystery thriller, but this movie pulls it off effortlessly.

Another big aspect that makes this film work is the colorful and intense cast who tell the story. Casey Affleck has for years been struggling to get out brother Ben's shadow and become his own leading man, and here he may finally get his chance. As Patrick, he comes across as someone who thinks he knows the ropes, and he probably does. But then he gets wrapped up into something where the rules change, and he's forced to either adapt right along with them, or else face being swallowed up whole by his own feelings and doubts. As his business partner and girlfriend, Michelle Monaghan brings the right amount of sentimentality to the role, even if she does seem a bit underwritten in comparison to Patrick. The supporting cast features some wonderful performances by the always reliable Morgan Freeman, Ed Harris, and Amy Madigan, but there is one supporting performance that really grabs our attention, and that is Amy Ryan as the strung-out mother of the missing Amanda. Despite the fact she's appeared in a number of films and TV shows, this is the first time I've truly noticed her, and she really nails her complex character. Her Helene is a woman who is completely self-absorbed in her own desires, but there is also a sort of pathetic humanity to her performance that makes her more interesting than she initially comes across. She doesn't get as much screen time as the other actors, but she leaves perhaps the biggest impression.
Gone Baby Gone is the kind of movie that is best to walk in knowing as little as possible. This is one where you don't want your friends to talk to you about it before you see it, as even the slightest spoiler would ruin the effect that this movie has. I was completely drawn in, and long before it was over, I knew that I was watching something truly rare. Here is a movie that is exciting as hell, emotional, honest, and surprising. It keeps us guessing most of the way, and when it's over, we can't stop talking about what we've seen and the choices the characters have made. Maybe the choices made are not the right ones, and maybe they don't bring the best results. But the choices the characters make by the end are smart and have real thought put behind them. Just like life.

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