Product Description

- Casey Affleck, Michelle Monaghan, Morgan Freeman, Ed Harris, Amy Ryan - Directors: Ben Affleck

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10300 in DVD
• Brand: Disney
• Released on: 2008-09-22
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Format: PAL
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .26 pounds
• Running time: 109 minutes

Amazon.co.uk
For his initial offering as director, Ben Affleck returns to the site of his first Oscar: South Boston (he and Matt Damon shared the award for Good Will Hunting). Hot on the heels of his moving turn in Hollywoodland, Affleck's Dennis Lehane adaptation marks one of the more seamless actor-to-filmmaker transitions in recent years. Ostensibly, a procedural about the search for a missing child, class and corruption emerge as his primary concerns. First off, there's low-rent private eye Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck, equally adept in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford). Then there's the girl's drug mule mother, Helene (Amy Ryan, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead). She and Patrick grew up in Dorchester, but he took a different path, setting up an agency with his girlfriend, Angie (Michelle Monaghan). Helene's aunt, Bea (Amy Madigan), hires the duo to augment the investigation, and they team up with Captain Doyle (Morgan Freeman) and Detective Bressant (Madigan's husband, Ed Harris). The authorities don't appreciate the interference, but Patrick knows how to get the local populace talking, and he soon finds there's more to the story than anyone could possibly imagine. Hard-hitting, but never soft-headed, the evocative end result proves Affleck has a flair for this directing thing and that his little brother can carry a major motion picture with aplomb. Gone Baby Gone belongs on the list of great Boston crime dramas, along with The Departed and Mystic River, Clint Eastwood’s take on Lehane. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Synopsis
Based on the novel by Mystic River author Dennis Lehane, Gone Baby Gone marks the directorial debut of actor Ben Affleck. Featuring a solid cast including Ed Harris, Morgan Freeman, and Affleck's brother Casey, in the lead role as a private detective, Gone Baby Gone centres on the disappearance of a young girl in the working class neighborhood of Dorchester in South Boston. With plenty of twists and turns, the movie works as a solid crime thriller, but it's as a study of a place--and one's ability to either accept and embrace or ultimately break free from it--that the film flowers. Beneath the movie's street-tough justice and cop shop politics sits a very complicated view of the world, which Affleck delves into unflinchingly, thanks in large part to his ability to extract some excellent performances from his cast. Casey Affleck offers a nice mix of both steely resolve and vulnerability, while Harris presents a strong performance as a conflicted, emotionally tortured cop. Of particular note is Amy Ryan as the mother of the abducted girl. Her character's outrageous foul-mouthed demeanor ultimately ends up feeling both tragic and pathetic, with the only appropriate reactions being either pity or rage. It makes for an uncomfortable but affecting dichotomy. Gone Baby Gone signifies a confident and impressive turn behind the camera for one of Hollywood's more contentious stars. A Boston native himself, Affleck takes great care in evoking his city's entirety, from its undeniably ugly underbelly, to what feels like an almost primordial sense of community. It speaks to Affleck's substance as a director, and of good things to come.

Customer Reviews

A hidden gem
Given no publicity and not shown in cinemas in the UK due to events at the time of release Gone Baby Gone passed by under the carpet.

It is a hidden gem that really shouldn't be missed. If you are a member of the 'yuck, it's Ben Affleck' bandwagon please, don't be put off. If this is anything to go by and he is hanging up the acting, we should have some great stuff in the future - maybe another Good Will Hunting?

Without giving too much away about halfway through there's a major left turn in the way the film is going and it's followed up with a series of them until the end. The only odd thing I found is Michelle Monaghan, I'm not sure that her charactor really needs to be here. Adds a bit of balance I suppose?

For those interested, the HD transfer isn't fantastic to be honest so if you haven't gone exclusively Blu you can happily stick to upscaled DVD.

Product Details
Audio:
Dolby Digital 5.1 English, French, Spanish.
DTS 5.1 French, Spanish.
PCM 5.1 English

Subs:
English, French, Spanish, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish, Icelandic, Dutch.

" ...I Always Think That Life Is About The Choices You 'Don't' Make..."
There's a moment about 5 minutes into "Gone Baby Gone" when you think you might just have stumbled on a genuine masterpiece...

As Casey Affleck ruminates in a weary beaten-up voiceover about good and evil and the life choices we make and how neighbourhoods shape us as people and those choices, the camera pans across the locals he's talking about and their Boston inner city terrain.

These are real people in the real world - all manner of faces, colours and creeds - just going about their business - a man sat on the steps of a tenement building having a midday cigarette - kids of 8 and 9 flipping open their mobile phones - murals on walls declaring all sorts - a white father plops his baseball cap on the head of his gorgeous son of one who giggles, while a black father positions his equally gorgeous older son on the baseball circle in the local park with a sense of pride - all of it eventually making its way to a media circus outside a suburban home and a picture of a 9-year old girl on a tree...

The opening minutes are full of these beautifully realised vignettes - the use of real Bostonians and their downmarket suburbs adding a reality and power to Gone Baby Gone that is simply stunning - and that gritty reality continues throughout the film. And when you learn that the director is pretty boy Ben Affleck whom everyone loves to hate - you're more than impressed.

But then of course it all goes to mush when the frankly ludicrously cherubic face of Casey Affleck appears with his equally drippy girlfriend Michelle Monaghan (an amazingly dull part for her) in tow beside him - they're the leads? We're expected to believe these dweebs?? While Casey is good in parts, he's out of his depth in others - and worse - a lot of the time you feel he's literally going to burst into a fit of the giggles at any moment. Monaghan is fabulous expressively as an actress, but her character Angie is a bit weedy and therefore difficult to care about - Angie seems almost superfluous to requirements (she was more fleshed out in the book).

But then you ask yourself why did top quality actors like Morgan Freeman and Ed Harris get involved in this movie - and the answer is the truly fabulous script adapted by Aaron Stockard from Denis Lehane's book of the same name. This is "Mystic River" territory - Lehane has worked in child abuse and abduction cases and knows his monsters and their families so well that his observations of them hurt you - literally. There are many scenes in this excellent film where I found myself tearful - and not always for the grotesque things that Miramax must show you about pervs and their ways - but for the humanity of the other people involved - an emotion that seems all too often missing from other films about this easy-to-exploit subject. Ben Affleck has imbibed his debut with genuine heart even if the story does go off the rails a bit towards the end.

Given real meat to work with, the large varied cast is uniformly brilliant right down to even the smallest part - and just when you think you've seen all that Harris and Freeman have to give - they floor you - both of them - adding a gravitas throughout that must have had the older Affleck tingling in his Director's chair. John Ashton is superb too as Ed Harris' sidekick and Titus Welliver as the child's father Lionel who may or may not be a nice guy. But the big surprise is Amy Ryan (Oscar nominated) who plays the devious trailer-trash druggy mum Helen McCready whose daughter Amanda is the girl pictured everywhere and abducted. You hate her and yet empathise with her in equal measure - and you wonder (like Affleck's character does) should a 9-year old girl be back with this train wreck of a person - or does Helen McCready deserve a second chance at life like everyone else? And who makes that decision?

The Blu Ray print is surprisingly bad - speckled and blurry in the indoor and night scenes and hardly revelatory anywhere else. Also 2 of the special features cavalierly give away far too much of the plot and the twists - so don't watch either before you see the movie. Also of note is David Buckley's tenderly evocative music, which gives many of the down and up scenes a hugely powerful lift.

Despite being just a few notches short in places, "Gone Baby Gone" is a superb film - a genuine sleeper from 2008 - and Ben Affleck has arrived as a Director - big time.

I was moved, confused, hurt and left thinking about difficult decisions.

Highly recommended.