Gone baby gone
In this post, I will review the 2007 movie Gone Baby Gone, directed by Ben Affleck, based on a novel written by Dennis Lehane. This movie was about private investigators, police officers, hysterical family members, drug dealers and criminals. What is there not to like about it?
Seriously, this is not the average crime movie. Let me explain. First, what is the story?
Patrick Kenzie is a young private investigator living with his partner and lover Angie Gennaro in Boston.
This is the inciting incident: when a 4-year old girl, Amanda, went missing, Patrick and Angie were approached by Bea McCready and her husband Lionel (played by Titus Welliver) to help augment the search.
Helene, Amanda's mother is an incorrigible drug addict and obviously negligent (even said to have left Amanda in a car for two hours in a hot summer day).
Plot turn 1: When Patrick discovered through an interview that Helene has been dealing drugs and another addict Ray may have been involved he decided to take the case and worked with police officers Remy Bressant (played by Ed Harris) and Nick Poole.
Patrick discovered Helene may have kept money ($130000) belonging to a Haitian drug lord, Cheese, and the missing girl might have been abducted as a result. The investigators found Ray tied up and dead at his home. Helene and the investigators retrieved the money owed to Cheese buried in Ray's garden.
Patrick approached Cheese, who denied having abducted Amanda.
Patrick was told by Jack Doyle (played by Morgan Freeman), a seasoned cop that the chances of Amanda being alive (after three days found missing) was extremely low.
The police had no other suspects except a pair of married cocaine addicts but there was no further evidence to incriminate them.
Midpoint: Patrick discovered Amanda's sweater in the post, and Jack said Cheese had called to arrange for Amanda's exchange for the drug money. Jack even showed Patrick a transcript of Cheese's phone call. On the night of the exchange, they heard gunshots (Cheese was shot dead) and found Amanda's toy in the lake in the quarry. Despite a thorough search, Amanda's body could not be found. She was presumed to have accidentally fallen into the water. Doyle, whose own daughter was killed years before, went into early retirement following public outcry over the mishap.
The movie could have ended here—a sad, crime story with everyone doing their best to help an awful mother but unable to recover her missing girl—the movie would have been good but not great.
Two months later, a seven year old boy was found abducted by a child molester Corwin Earle, who lived with the married cocaine addicts described above. When Patrick suspected that Earle could have abducted the boy, Remy and Nick decided to storm the cocaine addict's house. One of the addicts fatally shot Nick. When the boy's body was discovered in Corwin's room, Patrick killed Corwin. After the raid, Patrick found that Remy had also shot and killed both the addicts.
After Nick's funeral, Patrick discovered from a police officer friend that Remy had lied about not knowing Ray, and that Remy knew about the stolen money even before Cheese knew about it.
Plot turn 2 (Twist 1): Patrick confronted Lionel in a bar, and Lionel admitted that Amanda's kidnapping was staged by him and Remy to get the drug money. Remy appeared in a mask at the bar, pointing his gun at Lionel. Because Remy appeared threatening with his gun, he was shot by the bartender, and then died from his wounds.
Climax (Twist 2): During a police interview, Patrick realised that the police wouldn't have used phone transcripts. He went to Doyle's place and found Amanda alive. Doyle admitted that he helped in the apparent kidnapping and the fake exchange, where they had Cheese executed.
Moral choice: Patrick had to choose between keeping quiet (let Jack go away and bring up Amanda) or report to the police (and Amanda would be reunited with Helene and grow up likely a criminal or addict). Patrick chose the latter. Jack was arrested and Angie left Patrick because she disagreed with his decision.
At the end of the movie, the audience is left wondering if Patrick had made the right choice, when Helene revealed to him that she was going on a date without first arranging for Amanda's babysitter. In this ending, nobody except Helene seems to be better off. Even Helene ended up distanced from the few relatives she had. The ending was especially tragic for Jack and Amanda.
In short, this is a story that hits all the right notes, and has all the elements of a good story that keeps up the pacing and the audience's expectations. The film taught me a lot about story telling, and has characters tightly woven into the plot. Nothing is what it seems. Let me know what you think.
