Gone Baby Gone is likely one of the best directorial debuts ever, an extremely accomplished film that belies the first-time nature of director Ben Affleck. Considering Affleck has went on to helm such excellent films as The Town and his Oscar-winning Argo, perhaps we shouldn't have been surprised that he would know exactly what he was doing behind the camera. But when Gone Baby Gone was being made, audience's were only just seeing the beginning of Affleck making a comeback into the limelight, after mostly disappearing from the public eye for a few years following a string of critical and commercial disasters. All of a sudden he was now a director, and he definitely caught people off-guard with how good a director he turned out to be. Gone Baby Gone, based on the novel by Dennis Lehane (Mystic River, Shutter Island), tells the story of Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) and Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan), two private detective's investigating the abduction of four year old Amanda McCready from the crime-ridden neighbourhood Dorchester, in Boston. The movie is very dark, with no easy answers given and no happy endings. What we are presented with is a movie operating in moral and legal grey areas, with flawed characters on both sides of the law. Affleck plays it all beautifully, with a very sure-handed approach to the tone of the film. It definitely helps that he has stalwart actors like Morgan Freeman and Ed Harris lending gravitas, and a knockout performance from Amy Ryan as Amanda's questionable mother Helene.
