Gone Baby Gone – Little Girl Lost and Boston at its Grittiest

Article first published as Movie Review: Gone Baby Gone – Little Girl Lost and Boston at its Grittiest on Blogcritics.

Gone Baby Gone (2007) takes place in the poorer neighborhoods of Boston, mainly Dorchester, where it’s also filmed. The story itself revolves around the case of a missing four year old girl, Amanda McCready (Madeline O’Brian). Amanda’s aunt Bea (Amy Madigan) hires the private detectives Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) and Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan) to help with the investigation on the assumption that because Patrick is at home in the neighborhood he can get more information than the police.

The Boston police take missing children cases seriously, mostly because of the personal history of the police chief Jack Doyle (Morgan Freeman), who has lost a child himself, so there is already a full media circus when the Patrick and Angie get involved. The police chief assigns detectives Remy Bressant (Ed Harris) and Nick Poole (John Ashton) to the case and they have a good report with the private detectives. It turns out that the girl’s mother, Helene McCready (Amy Ryan) is involved in drug running, and a user herself, and not the most suitable mother, which seems to have something to do with Amanda’s abduction.

The whole investigation crawls through the underbelly of the working class neighborhood with its petty, and not so petty, criminals, some of which are old friends of Patrick’s. It takes a sharp turn for the worse when a ransom is suggested by the drug dealer Cheese (Edi Gathegi) who is everyone’s prime suspect. There is an exchange at a quarry that winds up looking like Amanda simply ran off a cliff and was drowned. Patrick can’t stop worrying at the case, though, there are too many things that don’t add up.

The story is complex, but not confusing, multi-layered and rich. It’s got an undeniable feeling of authenticity which is certainly due to some extent to the fact that Affleck has chosen authentic locations and cast a lot of non-professional local extras that sort of make you go “where did he find these people?”. It gives the street scenes and the occasional interiors of bars and clubs a flavor of overall gritty reality that makes the story hit all the harder.

The performances in this are really outstanding. Amy Ryan as Helene gives one of those performances where you just want to slap her character for not understanding what her behavior does to her daughter. The cast in general is stellar, to the point where it’s actually hard to single out any particular performance as carrying more weight than any other.

There are several interesting moral questions raised here, not only through the details revealed in connection with the missing child case. There are further reaching implications than you can glean at a first glance and they are all treated with the same understated gravitas in the context given by the story. So, yeah, it’s not simple. There’s an undeniable air of Noir over the whole story too, which I personally really like. It’s not only realistic and understated, it also challenges the viewer to pay attention and stay with the story, despite how dark it occasionally gets. The characters are genuinely interesting and complex enough that whatever moral questions arise they don’t feel tacked-on and gratuitous.

Ben Affleck has done an excellent job of directing this movie, his familiarity with Boston certainly adds layers to his interpretation of the story and what looks like blatant nepotism at a first glance, choosing Casey Affleck for his lead, is actually a very smart choice.

Gone Baby Gone (2007) is based on a Dennis Lehane novel with the same title. Directed by Ben Affleck it stars Casey Affleck (Patrick Kenzie), Michelle Monaghan (Angie Gennaro), Morgan Freeman (Jack Doyle), Ed Harris (Remy Bressant), John Ashton (Nick Poole), Amy Ryan (Helene McCready), Amy Madigan (Bea McCready), Titus Welliver (Lionel McCready), Michael K. Williams (Devin), Edi Gathegi (Cheese), Mark Margolis (Leon Trett), Madeline O’Brien (Amanda McCready), Trudi Goodman (Roberta Trett) and Matthew Maher (Corwin Earle).

Danny the Dog

Director Louis Leterrier has taken a script written by Luc Besson and made a rather odd and funny gem of a movie starring Jet Li (Danny the Dog), Bob Hoskins (Bart), Morgan Freeman (Sam) and Kerry Condon (Victoria). The movie was written exclusively for Jet Li, which in and of itself is rather astounding.

Because of his Wushu background Jet Li is not one of those performers you think of as an actor first. He is much to good at what he does in the martial arts fighting film category, but as I think we all can agree there is more to even a good fight movie then just the fancy moves, which is why certain performers do better than others. This is the movie that shows that there is more to Jet Li than just the amazing speed and agility we’ve come to expect.

Danny the Dog has a basic premise the idea that you can take a young boy and train him basically to be your pitbull, which is what Bart (Hoskins) has done. He unlatches the collar around Danny’s neck and basically says “sick ‘em” and Danny doesn’t stop hitting until he gets the command to stop. He is treated like a dog, sleeps in a cellar and gets kicked around and treated like a dog. That is to say, he doesn’t get treated lovingly and with a firm hand, he is just expected to perform. At one point in  the story Bart even says “I own you”.

Bart is a criminal and has a criminals agenda. He basically uses Danny to scare people. When he gets ahead of himself a rival gangster takes revenge in a drive-by shooting and Danny is let loose in the world. Danny gravitates towards a warehouse full of pianos where he has previously encountered Sam (Freeman), a blind piano tuner. Sam takes him in. Slowly Danny becomes more of a man and less of a dog.

Bart has survived his ordeal and by accident one of his henchmen finds Danny and brings him back to the life he used to lead. This does not end well. There really is no way it could.

So what does this mean in terms of what the film offers?

Well, we get spectacular fights all engineered by marital arts choreographer Yuen Wo-ping who was also involved in Kill Bill, The Matrix, Crouching Tiger… just to mention a few. And the fights are really down and dirty. It’s definitely not spiritual high grade fighting, it’s more street fighting with an excess of brutal blunt force. Even the pit fights are really dirty. there are of course pit fights. Danny is just a pitbull after all.

You also get the exploration of why Danny is the way he is. He starts looking for his childhood memories, which have more or less been burnt out of him.

Danny is so childlike, so simple that it is actually quite funny to see his reactions to little things like experiencing vanilla ice cream for the first time. Brain freeze and all. And this is brought out even more as Sam and Victoria start building him up as a human being. It’s charming and sweet, and I have to say, quite surprising. The director makes a point of saying that for Jet Li language is the biggest barrier and it is easier for Li to convey things with his eyes than through speaking. They make the parallel with Buster Keaton, which is actually quite interesting in and of itself. And valid. Jet Li doesn’t have a lot of dialogue, but he is very expressive. And it works. It really does.

The special effects are very well executed and just enough that you can have that sense of what is going on and still not get sidetracked by them. The camera work in the fight sequences is of course pivotal but there are other scenes that also rely heavily on the visual to convey what’s going on in Danny’s head.

Music plays a big part in this story, since Danny ha a affinity for the piano, Sam is a piano tuner and Victoria is a piano player and Danny’s mother was a piano player as well. So there is Mozart which is always nice.

Sam (Freeman) and Bart (Hoskins) are the two different fathers, or masters, representing two different ways to approach the role of top dog. One rules by fear, one by love. Danny responds to them differently as you would expect and this too actually works very well.

There is quite simply a lot going on in this movie. Much more than you would expect. It is a complex mixture of genres and themes, set in an undefined city at a non defined time and just outside the realm of reality. And stellar performances all around. Definitely something for those of us who like the genremix and enjoy seeing performers go outside the box. Oh, and not for the faint of heart – because the fighting is quite brutal.

Well worth seeing.

Mule