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| Casey Affleck holds a gun and has turned his back turned towards the camera against a dramatic sunset on this poster for his brother Ben Affleck's Gone Baby Gone |
Two private detectives are hired to investigate the abduction of a girl by the name Amanda. A missing person's case that gets deeper with each step.
Gone Baby Gone is written by Aaron Stockard (The Town (2010)) and great, debuting, Californian co-writer-director Ben Affleck (Argo (2012)), adapting Dennis Lehane's (The Given Day (2008)) same-titled 1998 novel. The plot moves in similar thematic waters to Clint Eastwood's great Lehane-adaptation Mystic River (2003), also a crime drama about child endangerment in Boston, Massachusetts.
The casting is on point, the performances and the local Boston colors are fine, (Affleck grew up in Boston.) But something about the film's structure is off, and the third act seems to last the whole second half of Gone Baby Gone.
Ben Affleck's little brother Casey Affleck (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)) plays our protagonist private investigator Patrick Kenzie, SPOILER who seems to make the wrong decision in the pensive, stone-in-the-shoe ending to the film. Affleck the filmmaker deserves a compliment for staying in the difficult story here, and for making moral questions a cornerstone in it.
Related posts:
Ben Affleck: Argo (2012) or, The Hollywood Hero (producer-director-star)
The Town (2010) - Renner stands out in entertaining, flawed training picture for Affleck (co-writer/director/co-star)
Armageddon (1998) or, Macho Men Save Earth From Disaster! (actor)
Dazed and Confused (1993) - Linklater's stoner youth nostalgia is a blast (actor)
Watch the opening three minutes of the film here
Cost: 19 mil. $
Box office: 34.6 mil. $
= Big flop (1.82 times the cost)
[Gone Baby Gone premiered 5 September (Deauville Film Festival, France) and runs 114 minutes. Shooting took place in Massachusetts, including Boston, and in California from May - August 2006. The film opened and peaked #6 to a 5.5 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it grossed solid 20.3 mil. $ (58.7 % of the total gross). Its 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were the UK with 3.6 mil. $ (10.4 %) and France with 2.7 mil. $ (7.8 %). Its performances in many other markets were too small for it to succeed theatrically overall. Roger Ebert gave the film a 3.5/4 star review, translating to a notch better than this review. It was nominated for an Oscar: Best Supporting Actress (Amy Ryan), lost to Tilda Swinton for Michael Clayton. The film was also nominated for a Golden Globe, won 2 National Board of Review awards and many other honors. It has been listed on annual top 10 lists by at least 65 film critics. Ben Affleck returned with UNHCR-themed video short Gimme Shelter (2008) and theatrically with inferior, Boston-set heist movie The Town (2010). Casey Affleck returned in The Killer Inside Me (2010). Gone Baby Gone is certified fresh at 94 % with a 7.7/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of Gone Baby Gone?
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