'Gone Baby Gone'

Rating:

BY GENE SEYMOUR | gene.seymour@newsday.com

October 19, 2007

One of the problems with movies about endangered children is that the children end up being abstractions upon which adults get to act out moral postures and psychological traumas. In most cases, this tempts one to conclude that children in these movies aren't people so much as objects used for exploiting the audience's fears and anxieties, a process that seems as seedy as the behavior most of these movies tend to demonize.

"Gone Baby Gone," which is about the search for a missing 4-year-old girl, flirts with such cross-purposes. Yet Ben Affleck's uneven but richly rendered directorial debut transcends other, similar movies largely because the moral conundrums dramatized are deeply, authentically distressing. Not since "Chinatown" has a private-eye movie left its audiences with so much acrid, unnerving residue to contemplate.

As with 1997's "Good Will Hunting," whose Oscar-winning script was co-written by Affleck, "Gone Baby Gone" is steeped in the working-class netherworld of South Boston, whose seedier precincts are obsessed with the disappearance of Amanda McCready. Oddly, the one person who's least worked up about all this is Amanda's drug-addled, self-centered mother Helene (Amy Ryan), who seems to get distraught over the situation when the mood arises; until, that is, she realizes how she may have put her little girl in danger.

Local private detectives Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) and Angie Genarro (Michelle Monaghan) are brought in by Helene's sister (Amy Madigan) to see what they can find around the neighborhood that the police, led by deputy chief Jack Doyle (Morgan Freeman), can't. Kenzie and Genarro are skittish about getting mixed up in the case. But Patrick's street savvy and tenacity soon pierce through layer upon layer of resistance, betrayal and deception.

Affleck (Ben) shows admirable instincts for the atmospheric and cognitive demands of realistic mystery storytelling. He does need to work on his rhythm. His avid eye tends to linger too long on the details, especially grittier ones. And because he is an actor (though, it turns out, a better director), he often submits to the temptation to draw every ounce of visual nuance from his actors.

Then again, maybe this isn't such a bad thing when all the actors are as good as these. Casey Affleck validates Big Brother Ben's investment with intense, passionate engagement. Ryan is a revelation in a extravagantly unlikable role, while Freeman is his excellent self. But it is Ed Harris, who all but steals the show as a volatile police detective carrying so many dark secrets inside that his twitching body can barely contain them.

GONE BABY GONE (R). Ben Affleck directs his brother Casey to impressive effect as a private detective combing the mean streets of South Boston for a missing child. Not an unqualified success, but an absorbing directorial debut with terrific performances from Michelle Monaghan, Morgan Freeman, Amy Ryan and Ed Harris. 1:54 (violence, vulgarities, drug content). At area theaters.