GONE BABY GONE

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT 

Due to many conflicts, difficulties and so on, I'm unfortunately ending the Director Of The Month Series. I would have love to do more Director of the month reviews but sadly it's kind of getting in the way of things and to be honest, I didn't really think it would work out. I gave it my best shot and that's all that counts. With that said, enjoy the review.

Well Ben Affleck's first film was a huge disappointment. Well here's a film that many people including Affleck himself consider to be his REAL first film...


Written by the same guy who wrote "Mystic River", the film is about a Boston detective (Casey Affleck) who is on a case to find a missing kidnapped little girl. As he gets further into the case, the situation becomes one big crisis. The plot is really well written, it has some good plot twists and makes you as eager as our hero to get to the bottom of the case.



While having a well written story, the film does suffer from bland acting and one dimensional characters. Casey Affleck as our hero, well maybe he did better in other films but here his acting is almost like his brothers. Bland, boring and not really engaging in the role. To be fair, the acting from the rest of the cast is the same and not only do they make the characters uninteresting but the characters themselves aren't interesting either. The only characters and performances I did enjoy is Morgan Freeman as the Police Captain and Amy Ryan as the sleazy mother of the kidnapped victim, that's it.



What I do give Affleck credit for is for his cinematography and editing. Watching the film, I do find his attempts to be very creative even if some of his styles don't work. What I enjoy is how he shows the flashback, his panning and shots of the city, the slow motion for one or two scenes, narration and so on. The only shots I didn't like and found annoying were the action scenes with fast editing and shaky camera and that whole sequence when the cut scenes just black out to cut to the next image. With that said and as annoying as they are, I still sense that Affleck is trying his hardest to be creative with the film and redeem himself from his god awful first film. As for the score, it's probably one of the most blandest score I ever heard.

While finding the film to be overrated and mostly bland I will say this, the film does redeem Affleck from the first film that he directed.

RATING 3/5