Gone Baby Gone

An Old School Pro Movie Review Beyond the Buzz and the Hype

Once upon a time, when movies used to be epic blockbuster friendly, I was a film critic. I went to Hollywood screenings where my critical ilk were served up banquets and bought off with promotional material beyond press kits. We've come a long way from those days, baby. And since Hollywood's historical heyday, my tolerance for bad movies has gone. Besides that, bad reviews are more fun to write and a public service for mature discriminating fans who know better.

I liked the title of this picture. It easily lends itself to an action flick genre. And I went in not knowing what it was about. Upon leaving the theater however, I felt assaulted. As if I had been force fed a portrait of reality skewered by a low common denominator demographic vision of entertainment minus suspension of disbelief. To wit, a style of filmmaking that appeals to what marketing focus groups think is hip as opposed to what makes a believable saleable storyline.

Gone Baby Gone is the tale of a missing child in Boston and a foul mouth populace that goes out of its way to find her amidst a bevy of whirlwinded plot twists more worthy of a Victorian Age novel than 21st century cinema. First a local drug lord is said to have kidnapped her as ranson for money stolen from him. Then a family of child molestors pops up as suspects. Lastly, we find out it was an inside job the police chief was in on to adopt and save her from a bad mother.

Casey Affleck stars as a PI on the case who stands out like a sore thumb among so many ugly real people actors that you get the feeling this was done to support a lead too cute to carry the picture. It backfires. Casey has the kind of baby face that should be modeling clothes in retail store ads. He's no he-man hunk who belongs in an action picture. There are reason why actors are typecast. And that is to make sure movies are believable and not an exercise in vanity.