Gone Baby Gone
“‘The world needs gravediggers too’? What the hell is THAT supposed to mean?”
Not a perfect effort, but still impressive. Ben Affleck has historically struck me as a lot smarter than his career choices would indicate, but I also got the impression — mostly from watching Project Greenlight — that he didn’t know how to approach things with the appropriate seriousness. Things like…himself. In the early episodes of each season, Matt Damon is leaning forward on the couch all intense, he’s got his Heineken in a death grip while he’s arguing about marketability and release dates, and he’s not rude, but he’s not messing around, either. Affleck, meanwhile, is telling Damon to chill out, which you can tell Damon kind of doesn’t appreciate, or he’s passing through the frame on the way to get lunch, or he’s kind of chuckling at the fact that he’s even on a reality show trying to help first-time filmmakers, and the overall vibe is that all of it, his whole career, is something Affleck isn’t really comfortable with. That it’s Damon’s “thing,” kind of, and Affleck sits nearby and suggests a few jokes, and Damon isn’t the kind of guy who’s going to get salty about sharing the credit, so one screenplay Oscar later and here Affleck is, dating way above his pay grade and acting like it’s a big joke because he’s not sure it’s what he wants to do, but you can’t beat the perks, so he doesn’t do much thinking or planning because it’s not necessary.
And obviously I have no idea what has gone on between those two or how much of Good Will Hunting each of them wrote or any of that; I don’t know them personally. It’s just a sense I get, that while Damon doesn’t take himself seriously at all, he’s not joking when it comes to his commitments, but Affleck didn’t have that passion about things because he maybe just sort of stepped into them, versus going after them.
It blew up on him, that attitude, with the J. Lo and the Gigli and all that nonsense, but I think it’s good that that happened, because then his boy Damon is off rocking every house in the European capitals as Jason Bourne and Affleck has to figure out what he really wants to do with his life. He wants to find a nice ass-kicking girl who likes baseball (good for him), and he wants to direct. Done and done, and good for him. It’s like…you know in Say Anything when Corey tells him not to be a guy, that the world is full of guys so he should be a man? Affleck finally stepped up to that.
Anyway, as I said, the movie isn’t perfect, but that may stem from story issues Affleck had nothing to do with (I believe it’s based on a Lehane story). From what I can tell, though, he’s got a facility for directing; it looks like a documentary in spots, the way it’s lit, and because he’s an actor, he gets great performances from his cast. I’m a fan of Affleck The Younger from way back, as I’ve said, so it’s no surprise that he’s top-notch here, but Ed Harris and Morgan Freeman have several “you just said a mouthful” scenes each, and Affleck keeps Freeman from going on Grand Old Man autopilot, and Harris from defaulting to that vein-popping thing he sometimes does instead of really acting the lines. I mean, I love that dude, but you know how he can get sometimes. And the plotting is more baroque than I’d like, but Affleck gets it over by using an underplayed style. It’s not a huge movie, but it’s got bite to it.
Other reviews pointed to Michelle Monaghan as underused, but I don’t really like her, so I had no problem with that; I do like Amy Ryan, but I feel like she got the nomination for the accent and the clothes, maybe, that if you pull that stuff off, the performance looks a little smaller. As far as awards go, though, the biggest winner in the cast will go unremarked on Oscar night: Titus Welliver’s fucking awesome mustache. If you look closely in some shots, you can see a group of guys under the mustache, smoking on a rainy evening, and it’s keeping them all quite dry — that shit is an awning. Love it. He still looks too young to be Amy Madigan’s husband, but I would have been more distracted by that if I hadn’t had the glorious Fuller brush to enjoy in all his scenes.
Tags: movies
This is based on the Lehane novel of the same name. From what I know, the story follows the book pretty closely, so it may be a thing where some of the book didn’t translate well to filming. Also, from what I know, they did change the Angie character somewhat-in the books she’s much more a mover of things than the movie version.
I agree with Nina A. However, it’s also worth noting that this is one of the later novels in the series (fourth out of five), so the book was naturally building on a bunch of prior character and plot information that the movie didn’t include and probably couldn’t have included unless they’d chosen to start with an earlier book in the series (which I kind of think would have been a better choice, but whatever, too late now).
And yeah, they totally ruined the Angie character. In the books she’s much more kickass. I really liked this movie, but it’s SO annoying when they screw over the female character by letting the male character do and say everything instead. :eyeroll:
Random story: I live in Boston, and I was eating lunch in a bar one day and looked across the street to see what I thought was a news crew until I noticed that the guy who was head-and-shoulders taller than everyone else looked oddly familiar. Yes, it was Affleck, apparently wrapping the Gone Baby Gone shoot by grabbing some stock footage of Dorchester. So I might accidentally be in that movie.
Interesting. The description of Ben Affleck in the first paragraph is dead-on to my impressions of him. Further, I live in the general Boston area, & I could give you a list a mile long of guys JUST LIKE THAT wandering around the place; they’re the guys we knew in school who pretty fun to hang with, but just fell into something when they graduated, or took a job because their buddy was doing it too & are still there 15 years later. If you ask them why they do such-&-such, they really don’t have any idea (sort of like the character BA played in Good Will Hunting, really–you KNOW that guy’s still out there working demo & drinking up his paycheck!). Maybe it’s a regional trait?
Yeah, Welliver was not kidding around with that mustache, was he? I read this and thought, “It can’t be that bad,” then just saw the movie today and thought, “Oh, it really can.”
Monaghan was definitely underused, but her character wasn’t really necessary anyway. They could’ve done everything the same without her and not missed a beat.
I read this whole Lehane series and thought Patrick/Angie were written a bit older and more world-weary, in a way, than I saw them here. I agree with Katy – I would have preferred them to have made a movie based on one of the earlier books, but maybe they’ll go back there.
And the mustache – oh my God, the mustache! It had remarkable stage presence; in any scene where it appeared, I couldn’t tear my eyes away. I think it made me miss at least a few lines of key dialogue.
@Cat: No way that’s regional. I grew up in a small city in Canada, and we totally have guys like that. I think that’s part of why Good Will Hunting did so well, because everyone can relate to those guys who were so much fun in high school and just fell into being an adult version of themselves while everyone else grew and changed.
I’ve avoided seeing Gone Baby Gone because “from the author of Mystic River” (or however the link to the Lehane novel is made in the trailers) is code for “a shrieky mess.” I found Shitstick River (heh, nice one, Sars) almost unwatchable, full of overblown, self-indulgent nonsense. (I’d say I’d be eternally grateful if someone could explain the rapturous reputation as an Ac-Tor that Sean Penn has somehow earned himself, but I’d probably be laughing too hard to repay the effort this is likely to take).
Evidently I have to reconsider this one, if only for Casey Affleck’s work. I’ve liked him in everything I’ve seen him in; he plays a whole person in The Last Kiss, which is something not to be said for many in that movie. He’s pretty much the only one I’d didn’t want to smack the hell out of whenever he was onscreen.
@Sandman: Your wariness is understandable — I shared it — but this movie is what Shitstick River would have been if it had been good, instead of a bellow-dramatic dirge of self-importance.
(hate!)
I did a mini-review of *Gone Baby Gone* last week that echoes the points here — sooo much better than *Mystic River*; really good performances by both big actors and Affleck’s no-name buddies (plus Michael K. Williams; love him); Amy Ryan good, but undeserving of a nomination; Amy Madigan looked too old (take a look at those lips lines, kids, and don’t smoke!) for Welliver and his ‘tache.
I never liked Casey Affleck, but thought he gave a nice, thoughtful performance instead of his usual David Arquette series of twitches. I also appreciated the very spare soundtrack that let the plot drive the intensity and not minor chords.
And I don’t know the Dorchester neighborhood, but I thought he made a great decision to use found footage to increase the documentary feel and show us faces and body types no casting agent can provide. In reading reviews after I watched, I see *EW* criticized him for that very thing, saying (I paraphrase) it was a crutch from a newbie who hadn’t found his style. I disagree and am really looking forward to his next project.
Sure, I might be looking forward to his Jimmy Kimmel video more, but I’ll watch for his next movie, too.
I was hugely disappointed at the much-hyped “Gone Baby Gone” for several reasons. My biggest problem was Casey Affleck’s inability to speak coherently. I don’t know whether he mumbles all the time or he was trying to sound like a Dorchester “character.” This made it difficult to follow a very complex plot line. (I didn’t read the book.) And, finally, it was another grim, depressing, unsatisfying movie. I’m not looking for “Fool’s Gold” silliness but, after “Mystic River” I guess I’ve had enough of Dennis Lehane.
AHHHH, I totally hated Mystic River, and I thought a friend and I were the only ones. That movie was a steaming pile of monkey crap.
I just finished watching Gone Baby Gone today. I dont’ like watching movies and knowing there are plot twists, because then I spend the whole movie thinking, “haha, I don’t believe you!”, but it wasn’t really the twists that made the movie. It was the moral ambivalence I had throughout the whole story. And Casey Affleck rules.