Gone Baby Gone
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Movie Reviews of Gone Baby Gone
Movie Review: MUCH BETTER THAN I EXPECTED!
Summary: 4 Stars
My first impression of this film a hour in was that it was a typical Hollywood movie, but it has some very good twists and unexpected surprises. A thought provoking film about morality vs. law, this film does hold your interest. I did figure out a few plot twist before they happened, but it did throw a few curves I missed along the way. Solid performances and story make this a film worth seeing.Movie Review: Nice surprise!
Summary: 5 Stars
Excellent movie. I didn't watch it when everyone told me how good it was. That was definitely my mistake. The movie actually haunted me after watching it, so I watched it a second time in the same day. I understand from other reviews that it doesn't do the book justice which just makes me want to read the book now. I would rate this movie up there with The Departed and Mystic River. Every time I thought I had figured it out and it was over, there was a new twist. Will be one of my favorites now!Movie Review: Banal, formulaic third rate "detective" story
Summary: 1 Stars
Horribly forced and flat acting (not even Ed Harris can save this one), coupled with an outrageous and irrelevant plot, will leave the seasoned filmgoer either unintentionally amused or upset that he will never get 2 hours of his life back. The film takes irrelevance to a new level: veteran cop close to pension risks everything to kidnap an unfamiliar girl, Casey's girlfriend (I don't even care to remember his character's name), decides to leave him because he does the right thing and returns the kidnapped daughter to her rightful mother, a supposedly religious detective has no reservations about blowing a suspects brains out, etc.
The Affleck's shamelessly promote Boston at every turn and in every film--there is a reason wise directors present most films in the king's english, it is because unless the plot demands it, spare the audience the hassle of listening to an unintelligable dialect; it would have been nice to have subtitles for those of us who are not New Englanders.
Finally, I hope that Ben Affleck would cut short his directorial ambitions and just return to acting--Umm, actually just try to come up with another Good Will Hunting for redemption. Casey, you need to work on character depth and emotional range as I felt that I was viewing Jesse James at times. Pacino played it safe like this in Merchant of Venice but those familiar with plays recognized that Shylock who is a demanding character, was often portrayed in a melancholy or layed back fashion which made it a lot easier for the actor, but not necessarily truer to the role.
This film is the work of an amateur through and through. Save your 2 hours.
Movie Review: Doesn't do the book justice
Summary: 3 Stars
I absolutely love Dennis Lehane and quite frankly this movie does not do the book justice. Casey Affleck is no Patrick Kenzie. Plus Gone, Baby Gone was like book 3 in a series. I don't understand why he would do a film in a middle of a series. Plus, I was stunned to see Angie just simply his girlfriend when in the books she's a married woman whom he wishes would leave her abusive husband. Lehane books are so layered with emotional angst and is nowhere in the realm of being predictable. This movie was transparent and very predictable. And Bubba? What a joke. I urge everyone to please read the first book in the series: A Drink before the War-and I guarantee you'll be hooked. This...wasn't horrible but it truly didn't do this series justice. Patrick is a complicated guy and there's a reason why he knows a lot of criminals. Same for Bubba-in this, you don't understand the connection between the two men. I'm glad to see I'm not the only one that thought that Casey sounded like he had a mouth full of marbles. Nepotism at it's best. Still, it's an okay movie; Lehane needs to let the likes of Eastwood to continue to make his films.Movie Review: Bad Baby Bad
Summary: 2 Stars
It's bad enough to sit through one disappointing movie after another. What's far worse is to see critics fawning all over a mediocre effort like Gone Baby Gone -- something that seems to be happening with greater frequency since Crash (unfortunately) won an Oscar for best picture. Have standards plummeted? Are critics less able to tell a good story from a bad one? Are brownie points being handed out for beating lowered expectations? That may, in part, be the case with Gone, Baby, Gone, since so many reviews express surprise that Ben Affleck (the director here) was involved and the movie isn't a complete disaster. As for it not being a complete disaster, I agree. But it's not far off. The saving grace of the film is Amy Ryan (who plays a thoroughly convincing wreck of a mother), although one good performance does not a movie make.
When I disagree with 94% of critics (at least according to Rotten Tomatoes), an explanation is probably in order.
First, let me try to make some sense of the story. (Yes, this means I will be revealing parts of the story.)
A white trash, drug-addled mother (Amy Ryan) has a strikingly beautiful daughter who she basically ignores -- so much so that her aunt and uncle become her default parents. As it turns out, the uncle may not appreciate having to babysit the kid, so when he overhears that the mother and her boyfriend may have stolen a bunch of loot from a drug dealer, he leaps into action. (The movie is murky, and later twists around a bit as to the uncle and his motivations for the events that follow. Is it greed alone? Does he want to "save" a child from a her wretched mother? One might speculate that if he wanted the best for the child, he might preserve the status quo, given that he and his wife seemingly are surrogate parents anyway, and that the aunt (at least) profoundly loves the child. At various points, the film suggests that the uncle (in addition to wanting the money) sought to have the child taken away from the mother entirely, or somehow believed that the kidnapping and ransom would make the mother realize how much she loved her child and convert her from a criminal and a drug addict into a better parent. The first is rather crazy, the latter is crazed.)
Returning to our story, the uncle, learning of the large cache of drug money, calls an old friend on the police force (a hammy Ed Harris) and, together, they apparently concoct the following plot: they're going to kidnap the little girl and, somehow, get the drug dough via blackmail. Somehow, they think this truly awful mother (who has basically abandoned the kid) is going to give up $150,000 for the return of the child she barely knows and can't be bothered with. (This is borne out after the kidnapping, when she barely seems interested in her daughter's fate.) In the meantime, someone beats the boyfriend to death looking for the drug money. (It is very possible, given the murky storytelling, that the uncle and his cop friend may be responsible for the beating. The drug dealer himself, we are told -- we are "told" just about everything in this movie -- didn't know about the theft until after the cop and uncle found out about it, and pretty convincingly denies any knowledge of the beating. In fact, he seems surprised to hear about the theft. So, perhaps, beating to death the mother's boyfriend is part of the plan concocted by the uncle and the cop. Given the moralizing of the story, why not? It's okay to kill people vigilante-style, plant evidence, and kidnap children. But I digress.)
Our story continues.
Apparently, the uncle didn't count on his wife being upset about the kidnapping of a niece she obviously adores. (Try to figure that one out.) And, as a consequence, the entire kidnapping plan gets out of hand as the aunt does what any caring relative would do when a little girl goes missing: she enlists the media and just about everyone else (including our main character and his girlfriend) to find the kid. It appears that this happens even before the uncle and cop even attempt to exchange the kid for the money takes place.
At this point, it really is worth asking whether the uncle and his cop friend ever really planned to give the kid back in exchange for money. After all, these two (we later learn -- or do we?) were most concerned about getting the kid away from the mother. Or, as later exposition (yet again) alternatively suggests, were they just trying to put the fear of god into the mother -- so they'd get the dough and turn her into a first-rate mom who would love and cherish her kid? (Give me a break.) At least these two noble idiots managed to brutally torture and then shoot her no good boyfriend, right? Maybe. Who the hell knows?
It goes downhill from there (if that's possible), and ends up with dopey reveal that an heroic police captain (Morgan Freeman playing Morgan Freeman) helped to stage the death of the little girl (executing a drug dealer in the process) for the purpose of kidnapping the girl and transplanting her into a better home away from her white trash mother. (Maybe the captain was involved in the plot from the beginning, but things are so jumbled that it's hard to know.) Then, our protagonist faces the deep moral dilemma of turning in the bad cops and returning the kid to her mother (and her aunt, who adores the girl), or not turning in the bad cops, becoming an accessory to kidnapping, and continuing to allow the child's heartbroken aunt to believe the little girl drowned. The protagonist's girlfriend leaves him (maybe) because of his choice (does it really matter what the choice was?), and then he gets to babysit the little girl when her mother goes on a date.
The End.
Let me summarize.
I found Gone, Baby, Gone sloppy and incoherent, not tough. It was filled with silly and incomprehensible ideas and moments, and rather than raising interesting moral issues, it presented them on a silver platter in these long, disjointed chunks of dialogue that felt like lectures in a low-rent philosophy class. The scene where Ed Harris recounts his own planting of evidence was bad acting, pure and simple, and even worse writing. You come away feeling like you've been lectured by a moron, which is hardly a way to draw the audience into a difficult ethical dilemma.
Some characters inexplicably disappear (what happened to Ed Harris at the pedophile's house?), others behave incomprehensibly (you really think a seasoned police officer who had his own child abducted would put another family through that?), and the final reveal is more ridiculous than surprising. With the child declared "dead," were they going to create an entirely fake identity for her? I suppose once you've kidnapped a child and left her loved ones devastated (at least some of them), murdered her father, and executed a couple of thugs, why not be an "angel" and obtain for her a fraudulent identity? I suppose these cops have enough connections to break into the local town office and plant a fake birth certificate and convince the Social Security Administration that they overlooked someone. Of course, then they have to deal with the fact that they've probably traumatized the kid by binding and blindfolding her, or was that just a fake flashback? And, forever after, they probably have to hide from this kid the true story of her life so as not to cause her even more psychological trauma.
The entire mess concludes with this rather glibly "artsy" ending reminiscent of the final scene in The Graduate -- with the main character realizing that he's gotten what he asked for, and returned a child to a mother who didn't even know the name of her doll. Droll, at best.
I get the sense that Ben Affleck simply couldn't handle the material. It was too complex for him, or perhaps too complex to be shoehorned into movie length. Either way, it's flawed and uninspired, except for the casting of a bunch of inbred yokels as extras. That, at least, had some visual appeal.