Gone Baby Gone
This is an interesting one, I guess because of quite how much I expected to hate it from the start. To my surprise it actually hits a place just as morally gut-wrenching as Mystic River (the novel of which was written by the same author) in the end, which certainly leaves you thinking you’ve seen something great – but it took a lot of its time in winning me over.
Someone says to Affleck’s character early on, “You may look young, but if you wanna find this girl, you better not act it,” and that’s the problem I find with the whole movie. In one of the film’s most memorable scenes (at least, that’s what I’m sure it’s supposed to be), Affleck finds one of the missing children, dead, with the killer in the room. We’re given a grotesque close-up of the child’s face, a cutaway of Affleck throwing up, before he shoots the killer in the back of the head, all for us to see. I’m sure cheers have gone up in cinemas over this moment. All I wanna say is bravo, you showed the bloodthirsty animals exactly what they wanted to see.
Don’t get me wrong, a child killer deserves whatever is coming to them. But this seems like such an immature, simplistic approach to the subject all the way. A scene shortly following this has Ed Harris seething about, “if a child molester sees me comin’, he better run,” etc, and it’ll likely be an Oscar clip in February. It’s clear to me that that moment isn’t acting. Everyone in this movie has the exact same look on their face. It’s the look any of us get on our faces when dealing with this subject. But it’s combined with a horrible self-satisfied smugness like they actually think making a movie about it is half as good as anything the investigators and police do in real life. And all the way through is Casey Affleck, looking at every moment like he’s looking for an opportunity to crack a joke.
It’s a well-made movie (especially for Ben Affleck’s debut as director – but I really didn’t want to find myself saying that here, it really should exceed his name) and has its moments, but it’s also a very cheap shot at emotions that should not be exploited this way – a masterpiece, as some have been saying? Give me a freaking break. It’s all in the ending, and that I’ll grant you comes close; but it’s not enough. Part of me thought I might’ve found myself comparing this movie to the far too obviously comparable case of Madeleine McCann. It’d be an insult to do so, but I’m sure it’ll be enough to stall a UK release for quite some time.