Ben Affleck's rough and arresting directorial debut

In the poor South Boston neighborhood of Dorchester (writer Dennis Lehane's birthplace) the TV news and an avid public are all over a story: a little girl has been kidnapped. Family members want Patrick Kenzie (Ben Affleck) and his girlfriend and partner Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan), young missing persons detectives, to investigate. Police Captain Jack Doyle (Morgan Freeman) objects. Police detectives Remy Bressant (Ed Harris) and Nick Poole (John Ashton) aren't friendly. But Patrick and Angie are tough and they persist. It's they who unravel what turns out to be one of Lehane's typically tangled webs.

Gone Baby Gone doesn't completely work as a movie, but it's still a very interesting directorial debut for Ben Affleck--who took a wise risk in trusting his younger brother Casey for the central role. Casey's no novice, but never a star till this year. He's arresting as the shifty, insecure Ford in Andrew Dominik's arty Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, and he embodies innocent idealism equally effectively here. Ben also took a risk in deciding to go for grit, with many actual denizens of the low life world it depicts used as minor actors.

Dennis Lehane's story set in the white ghettos of Boston, which forms the movie's basis, isn't as deep and dark and mystical a tale as his Mystic River, filmed four years ago by Clint Eastwood to great acclaim. But the issues this film raises are simpler, plainer, and ultimately more troubling: they go to the roots of the uneasy equation of morality and class. And despite use of some solid pros, including Ed Harris and Morgan Freeman, this one doesn't have the distractions of Eastwood's star-studded cast.

Casey Affleck is small. He's nice looking, but not as commanding or handsome as Ben. He has a rusty, reedy voice that doesn't carry; it just stands in the air. He also has a quality of freshness and surprise, as if the camera's caught him off guard but he refuses to flinch. His Patrick Kenzie will stand up to the toughest, most evil people in Dorchester: he has balls of brass without seeming to know it, or to know any other way. It's this strength from the early scenes, where he's tentative, yet unyielding, that gives conviction to his later choices.

The film is anchored by Morgan Freeman in the important secondary role of the police captain, a man who's lost a child to kidnapping himself and now heads a Crimes Against Children unit. The other main role is Ed Harris' as the feisty, mysterious detective from Louisiana; Harris shows his stuff here; he's hard and slick without cliché. Some commentators have objected to Ben's use of bloated bar bums and other authentic white ghetto locals; they've said these salty characters are too distracting and pull the story down into an inferno of lowlife immorality.

But that's the point. From the first, when Bea McCready (Amy Madigan) and her husband, Lionel (Titus Welliver) appear to seek Patrick and Angie's help three days after the highly publicized abduction of their little niece Amanda, things feel fishy. This is a world so hopeless and off center it crawls with sleaze. It soon emerges that Amanda's single mom Helene (Amy Ryan), Lionel's sister, is a real mess, more into turning tricks to buy drugs than minding her little girl. She's a drug runner herself, and the abductors are probably people she's embroiled with.

The incredible, troubling question that will arise is whether Amanda's mother is at fault herself; if she cared; and obviously, if she was a fit mother. But can she be faulted for the lowness of her own life? Taking us into convoluted lives and twisted emotions warped by deprivation, addiction, and traumatic loss, the story at times seems like a slum version of something from James Ellroy's ultra-lurid (but highly cinematic) "L.A. Quartet," with similarly twisted machinations and motives in a Lehane permutation. Nobody is what they seem to be, except for Patrick and Angie. The unraveling revelations may strain credulity, but they keep you paying attention.

The movie is very strong on atmosphere and situation, not quite so good at sustaining the forward momentum of the action. Most of what happens seems to come through flashback or review. The investigation tale ends, and then it picks up again later. I'm not sure the movie ever recovers its energy, and yet still t it gets much more interesting, despite the fact that it flounders a bit somewhere midway in the denouement. But then the moral dilemma comes hard in the face of the young investigators--and us--an issue so clearly posed and firmly dwelt upon that we carry it out beyond the credits.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.