Review of Gone Baby Gone (2007) by Jared S — 07 Nov 2012

Less action oriented than The Town and definitely not as feel-good as Argo, but probably the better film in terms of drama among all three of Affleck's movies as a director. Another great moral story about detectives, missing persons and Boston from Dennis Lehane (same person who wrote Mystic River and Shutter Island).

Don't read beyond this if you haven't already seen it.

This film brought in a moral question at the end: do you return the kidnapped girl to her neglectful drug addict mother and do the lawful thing or do you let the kidnappers keep the girl from harm's way and raise her in good hands? There are other factors that play in, of course, but the end decision to return her, leaves Casey Affleck's character (who by the way, did a fantastic job) with a burden on his back (although either way, it was a tough decision to make).

I think he made the right call, because I don't think anyone has the right to take someone's child even if they can do a substantially better job raising that child. I can see how that can be black and white, but that's what I personally believe although I can see either way. Patrick was right though, he should've called social services. The ending made sense but seemed very odd altogether. Anyway, It was a great film and directorial debut.