Year: 2007
Director: Ben Affleck
Writers: Ben Affleck, Aaron Stockard and Dennis Lehane (Novel)
"When 4 year old Amanda McCready disappears from her home and the police make little headway in solving the case, the girl's aunt Beatrice McCready hires two private detectives Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro. The detectives freely admit that they have little experience with this type of case, but the family wants them for two reasons - they're not cops and they know the tough Boston neighborhood in which they all live. As the case progresses, Kenzie and Gennaro face drug dealers, gangs and pedophiles. When they are about to solve their case, they are faced with a moral dilemma that could tear them apart."
- Summary written by garykmcd
I mostly watched this movie, because it was directed by Ben Affleck. I'm not really a big fan of Ben Affleck, I used to hate him without any good reason, I just did. But I started liking him after Gone Girl, he did a magnificent acting job in that one. I'm always interested in what kind of directing actors do (I checked out Liberal Arts directed by Josh Radnor simply because of Radnor, same goes for Slipstream directed by Sir Anthony Hopkins and Keeping The Faith, directed by Edward Norton), so I got interested in Gone Baby Gone. Also, I wanted to watch a thriller - which this wasn't - because of my current writing project.
The beginning of the movie made it seem like this movie could be really boring. The beginning was just shots of the neighbourhood and the main character Patrick Kenzie's inner monologue. It seemed like the beginning was trying too hard to convince the audience, that this movie is going to be smart and deep and artistic. It was kind of the moment where I thought this is not going to be a good movie. So, very weak beginning.
The cinematography was very nice. It was clear, when it needed to be clear, and it was messy when it needed to be messy (certain "action" scenes, nervous running, etc). It was definitely better than the average flavourless cinematography.
Apart from the cinematography, this movie felt like an episode of a crime TV show. The story was so simple, But where TV show episodes usually end, this just kept going and going, which kind of felt like it was prolonged, even though it definitely wasn't. I haven't read the novel, but I think the writing might work better there.
So I don't exactly like the writing in this movie. It was decent, but just decent. But I have to just judge the dialogue, like how do I know what Dennis Lehane really do, dialogue is only one little piece when you're writing prose. Anyway, even though the writing was just decent, the story was interesting. Well, then again the plot wasn't too intriguing, because it reminded me of a TV show, and I like to keep my movies and TV apart (films are a hobby, TV is just something to watch when there's nothing else to do). But the story actually made you think what was right and what was wrong. There was a lot of ethical dilemmas there, which is almost always great. And the issues we're dealing with in Gone Baby Gone are not at all simple. Of course it's another thing to throw an easy ethical dilemma into the audience's face and basically solve it during the movie. This movie, well, even though decisions were made, the audience still doesn't get told what was right. I think that was really great.
Actually I think I wasn't positively surprised by Affleck's directing. I was positively surprised by the movie. It started weakly, but it was very interesting. Affleck showed some skill, I think I need to watch something else he has directed so I can be sure. Gone Baby Gone is definitely worth a watch.
☆☆☆☆☆☆
6 / 10
No comments:
Post a Comment