Review: Gone Baby Gone (and a little unfinished business)

• First things first, the "Who'd Win in a Fight?" poll officially closed yesterday and a last minute vote put John McClane in the sole lead. Apparently, the majority of my readership (37.5%, wow!) has decreed him the winner. I personally didn't vote for him, and my reasoning is this: admittedly, the man is a badass, and like I said, a cockroach - he will survive! But I think both Riggs and Bourne would outmatch him in a fight. And between those two, Bourne undoubtedly has the more impressive combat skills, but he fights dispassionately. There is a coolness there that I think could be his undoing if he came up against a worthy opponent. Riggs has enough of that crazy edge to beat him under the right circumstances. Nine times outta ten, I think Bourne will win, but watch out for Riggs in that final round: if Bourne doesn't care enough, Riggs will pull it out. But, no one really cares about my reasoning - THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN! Congratulations, John McClane, you have been declared the winner of this imaginary, hypothetical, unnecessarily violent, extremely criteria-laden fight! Wear the honor proudly into the annals of history!
• Secondly, for you "American Idol" fans out there (I know you exist), I came across a really funny article on Television Without Pity the other day, dissing the Top 10 Most Insane Performances in Idol history. I don't know if they are truly the worst, but the descriptions alone had me busting a gut, so here's the link: Top 10 AI Worst. These pages are pretty slow loaders, so beware. Also, most of them are decently easy to find on You Tube, if you feel the need to refresh your memory while reading.
• Also, for you "Office" fans, a funny passage from the recap of "Michael's Birthday": Jim and Pam return to the office and Dwight asks Jim where he's been. "And don't say the bathroom, because I kicked in all the stalls." Without missing a beat, Jim gets ready to tell Michael about Dwight's invasion of privacy, and suddenly Dwight owes Jim for covering for him. There has to be some kind of name for the martial art that Jim has perfected in which he consistently turns Dwight's uptight officiousness around on him. Schrute-o? And from "Drug Testing": When Jim's turn comes, he turns it around on Dwight, saying that pot is a memory loss drug. "Now how much pot did you smoke?" Jim demands. There he goes again. Maybe Schrute-o isn't what Jim does. Maybe it's more like Schrute-jitsu. That cracked me up. The writers at TWoP are geniuses.
  

GONE BABY GONE:

I've watched a lot of episodes of "Law and Order: Special Victims Unit." I wouldn't call myself an avid fan, but I like to watch those marathons on USA when nothing else is on. The cops on that show are always talking about how seeing a constant stream of these horrific crimes changes the way they do their job. They stop giving people the benefit of the doubt; they don't trust the legal system to put the right people away or keep their victims safe because that trust has been proven wrong too many times before. That doubt is at the heart of Ben Affleck's directorial debut, Gone Baby Gone.

The story was adapted from the novel by Dennis Lehane, the same mind behind Mystic River, another story of crime and sins of the past set in a tight Boston community. The film has obviously benefited from Affleck's own experiences growing up in Boston; most of the characters in this film feel authentic, and in their appearance, approaches and dialogue seem organically lifted from the actual locations. Casey Affleck opens the film with a monologue that sets up some of the fundamental codes and belief systems in this neighborhood: "I always believed that it was the things you don't choose that make you who you are...your city, your neighborhood, your family." Casey Affleck plays Patrick Kenzie, a local P.I. that understands this community, was raised in it, and knows how to operate within it. But in the course of the film, he is thrown into a quandry, and like the best of Lehane stories, has to make decisions tainted in moral ambiguity.

This small domain is set into an uproar when four-year-old Amanda is kidnapped from her home. She's been missing for 3 days. Her mother Helene (Amy Ryan) is white trash and seems less than despondent about the girl's disappearance. Helene's brother, Lionel (Titus Welliver), and his wife Bea (Amy Madigan) come to Patrick and his partner/live-in girlfriend Angie (Michelle Monaghan), desperate for assistance in locating their niece. The P.I.'s uneasily agree (they don't want the horror of finding a dead child to disrupt their otherwise pleasant existence) and meet with Captain Jack Doyle (Morgan Freeman) about their involvement. Doyle reluctantly agrees to let them shadow the lead investigators, partly because he legally must, but also because he lost his own daughter to kidnapping and murder and knows too well that the circumstances in this case are edging towards failure. While Patrick and Angie begin investigating the actions of Helene the night Amanda disappeared, they meet up with Detectives Remy Bressant (Ed Harris) and Nick Poole (John Ashton), two hard-boiled cops, long-since jaded by their years of service in the Child Crimes division. This may seem like a lot of unnecessary backstory, but the histories of these characters play integral roles in the development of the case and in the influence of their decisions.

I won't describe details of the plot because it is best to watch the investigation unfold, without being influenced by previous discovery; you need to see it from Patrick's point of view. And what a point of view it is. Casey Affleck, long in his older brother's shadow, has emerged this year as an actor of incredible talent (he was just nominated for Best Supporting Actor by the Academy for his impressive turn in The Assassination of Jesse James...). His boyish looks serve him well as his character's naivete gradually hardens, continuously challenged by a more complex moral code. He has a number of scenes where he questions residents of the neighborhood and has to appear nonthreatening, but also acquire information from characters who don't like to talk. The way these people speak is hard and full of profanity, but it is realistic to this time and place. Imagine the boys from Good Will Hunting growing up meaner, with about twenty times the menace to back it up, and that is the world Patrick and Angie have to navigate. (There are no amusing anecdotes or "Double Burger" jokes in this film. "Morgan" has grown up and advanced to the big boys table.) Affleck does a tremendous job of being affable, but intimidating, all the while still projecting an innocence. It is a very fine line he has to walk.

Affleck is supported by an all-star cast, not the least of which is Amy Ryan, recently nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her work as Helene. Her work in this role has garnered much attention for not seeming like acting. Helene is instantly recognizable as white trash, a drug addict, a person without motivation in life. Her appearance, her way of speaking, even the change in her mood is all perfectly calibrated. If I hadn't just looked her up on the Internet Movie Database and learned that her career has been long and diverse, I would have assumed that this was her first film role and that she was cast from real life. Ed Harris has the most difficult role in the film, making the audience believe in his code and what he would sacrifice for it. We don't even find out all his character is until the end of the film. Morgan Freeman has a scene near the end of the film where he has to sell the audience on a line of thinking; the desperation in his voice is menacing, and were it any one other than Morgan Freeman, we may not believe him.

This film is not perfect. It lacks the headlong enthusiasm of The Departed and doesn't present the blurred morality as concisely as Mystic River, but it is effective. Somewhere in the middle, it gets a little bogged down and seems hesitant. However, the ending of the film is majestic in its complexity. We realize that every moment in this film has been preparing us for this conclusion. Each decision, each character's code has lead us to this moment, and lesser parts of the film become recognizable. I checked into a board with fans discussing the film's ending, and it was full of intelligent debate: good vs. evil, right vs. wrong, the "greater good," all the film's intricacies debated with enthusiasm, divisive opinion, and smart reasoning. Ben Affleck has made a very good film, especially if it can inspire such compelling discourse.