By Sara Pintilie/entertainment editor
Gone Baby Gone (4 stars)
Gone Baby Gone shows true potential for a promising career behind a camera for Ben Affleck.
The taut thriller starts off at a normal pace, but as the movie progresses, it picks up a gritty momentum leading to an enthralling and morbidly satisfying ending.
Private detective Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) and Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan) are hired to find the missing child of Helene (Amy Ryan).
The police don’t want them helping with the search, especially Capt. Jack Doyle (Morgan Freeman), but Kenzie finds sympathetic Det. Remy Bressant (Ed Harris) to help him return Amanda (the uber-cute Madeline O’Brien) to her mother.
But Helene is something else. She is a neglectful mother with drug problems and a colorful vocabulary.
The audience can’t help but think the mother had something to do with the disappearance of her daughter.
But as Kenzie digs deeper into the case, the moral line between right and wrong becomes so blurred, he isn’t even sure anymore.
He loses faith in the cops, Bressant and himself when a potential clue to her location goes awry.
The movie is a disturbing look into a parent’s worst nightmare, but the film is done with the right amount of elegance and restraint.
Casey flourishes in this dark flick.
With Gone Baby Gone and The Assassination of Jesse James … under his belt, he has proven he is not just Ben’s little brother.
He can lead a movie with ease, and he commands the scenes even with big guns like Harris and Freeman present.
Amy Ryan isn’t on screen very often, but she is fantastic as the coke addict who moonlights as a mother.
Her portrayal is dead on and deserving of her Oscar nod.
Gone Baby Gone is a thrilling directorial debut and a great showcase for what the Affleck brothers can really do.
