Ben Affleck’s directorial debut delves into an intriguing moral dilemma: can something everyone agrees is wrong actually be the right thing to do?
Gone Baby Gone is one of those movies that I always heard was good, but never got around to seeing and didn’t even know anything about. I was a little thrown off by the pacing in the first half, but by the end I understood the motivation behind it. I ended my initial viewing with my mind blown and my own morals called into question. Because ultimately, this is a movie about morals and whether the end justifies the means.
Cast and Crew
This was Ben Affleck’s debut as a feature film director and he also co-wrote the screenplay adaptation of the novel. I have to hand it to him—the film-making was solid and he managed to weave in details so seemingly minor that I didn’t even think twice about them until plot twists start popping up nonstop towards the end.
Of course, he cast his brother Casey as the lead, Patrick Kenzie. I’m not the biggest Casey fan, but he did well in this role. Michelle Monaghan is good at playing his girlfriend Angie, but her character honestly didn’t contribute much except as the contradicting voice to Patrick, and most of the time she just lingers in the background. I liked her conversations with Patrick, I just wished she had been a bigger role.
The other big names were Ed Harris and Morgan Freeman, who are always fantastic, but the big surprise for me was Amy Ryan as the mother of the missing girl. I love Amy in the role of Holly Flax in The Office, so it was bizarre to see her as a white trash coke-head. I also found it hilariously ironic that her character’s name is Helene, which also happens to be the name of another character Michael Scott dates.
Pacing
When the story opens, it seems like it is going to be a mystery story about a kidnapped girl named Amanda. And yes, ultimately it is. Yet, less than halfway through, the girl is apparently found (then accidentally killed) and both kidnappers are dead as well. The way Patrick narrates at this point, it sounds like the story is wrapping up, so I couldn’t even begin to imagine where it could possibly go from there. Still, there were several glossed over oddities up to that point, so I wasn’t totally surprised when Amanda’s story came back around after a detour through an incident with a different missing kid. What I was not expecting was the deep, complex truth behind what was really going on. As Patrick starts to notice more and more details, my mind raced while trying to click together the pieces of the puzzle that I couldn’t make sense of yet. In the end, I was impressed by how much was hidden right under the audience’s noses.
Theme
During the sub-story in the middle, Patrick kills a man after learning he has kidnapped, raped, and murdered a seven-year-old boy. Only, in the moment where Patrick deliberately fires the shot, the pedophile is unarmed and cowering. This is where the theme is truly introduced: can a sinful act be considered good depending on the context? In this instance, the question would be this: is killing still wrong if the person deserves it? Does it matter that he was unarmed at the time? Should he have been arrested instead and tried for his actions? These are the types of questions Patrick wrestles with in the aftermath as shame haunts him. When asked if he would kill the man again if given a do-over, he says no, he would have left him alive. But his girlfriend Angie, as well as Remy (Ed Harris), applaud him for taking a pedophile off the streets. Remy even goes so far as to give an example from his own life where he influenced a man into overdosing because the man was an abusive father, and Remy feels totally justified in doing so.
With the theme now forefront in the viewer’s mind, the story returns to the Amanda plot where we find out that the entire kidnapping is an elaborate scheme to take her away from her drug addicted, neglectful mother and put her in a safe and happy home. Patrick and Angie even find her and see how happy she is. But that question comes back around in a new form: is kidnapping wrong when the child is better off because of it? Once again, Angie takes the opposing side of Patrick, begging him to let the girl stay here and be happy, but Patrick can’t let it end like this. In his eyes, Amanda was stolen, and no matter how happy her “new family” makes her, no matter how bad a mother Helene is, it’s still wrong. He thinks if everyone has such a problem with how Helene is raising Amanda, they should have called social services rather than take illegal initiative themselves, especially since several people end up dead in the process.
Ultimately he calls the cops, and Amanda is returned home. We only see Helene for a few minutes at the end, but I got the impression she has cleaned up some, though she’s still no saint. So that leaves the question for the viewer. Was Patrick right to return her? Was Angie right to think she was better off in a stolen home?
The thing I liked most about this movie is that it asks these intense moral questions, providing ample justification for deeds generally considered “wrong.” I’d be willing to bet that not all viewers have the same opinions on which side was in the right. In fact, my husband and I disagreed on whether Patrick made the right calls to return Amanda home and to kill the pedophile. I don’t often feel a movie asks me to take a moral stance, while making valid points on both sides of the issue.
What do you think Patrick should have done?
Logan’s score: 9 out of 10