Review by Leonard Norwitz

Studio:

Theatrical: Miramax & HanWay Films

Video: Miramax Home Entertainment

Video:

Aspect ratio: 1.85:1

Feature film: 1080p

114 minutes: 21 chapters

Single disc 50 GB

Supplements: 480i & 1080i

Audio:

English 5.1 Uncompressed (48 kHz/24-bit)

English DD 5.1 Surround

French DD 5.1 Surround

Spanish DD 5.1 Surround

Subtitles:

Feature: English SDH, French, Spanish

Extras: English SDH, French, Spanish

Extras

•  Audio commentary by the director Affleck & writer Aaron Stockard

• Going Home: Behind the Scenes with Ben Aflleck (HD)

• Casting Gone Baby Gone (HD)

• Deleted Scenes w/optional commentary by the director & writer

• Alternate Ending

Locking Blu-ray case

Release Date: February 12, 2008

Gone Baby Gone ~ Comment

Gone Baby Gone is not only the first feature film directed by Ben Affleck (no kidding!) but a real collaboration between Ben and Casey - his younger brother by three years, in case you were wondering.  It may be that Gone Baby Gone will settle the question of their respective talents for Ben turns in a directorial effort more engaging than any of his acting.  This may be seen from the outset as Affleck's camera scans the Boston neighborhood where much of the action will take place, and as Casey's voiceover sets up the question of character development.  We are reminded at once of the opening of The Departed.  Scorsese may find more art, but less soul.  We feel we have quite dropped in on an actual neighborhood instead of a Hollywood stand-in for one.  The people we see on doorsteps and playing on the streets in Affleck's city are so not Central-Casting that we might feel a bit like intruders – like a whiter version of Baltimore's The Wire.  Not that Ben is able to keep up this level of coherence in every part of the movie, but it's a very promising first effort: perhaps not as secure as L.A. Confidential or Mystic River (also written by novelist Dennis Lehane) – but it is certainly more thought provoking and more ambiguous than the former and less calculating than the latter.   All in all, Gone Baby Gone is better than your average feature length crime drama of recent years.  Once we learn the motives for the crime, and we do, nothing is black and white, which is only one of the many things that make this movie interesting.

I can't say that I have been following brother Casey's career closely, though I do remember him as one of Nicole Kidman's trio of lost students from To Die For.  I thought his Ocean's franchise character to be fairly disposable, but in The Assassination of Jesse James he comes into his own, as his many acting award nom's prove.  Casey has a tendency to mumble or, at least, to speak so quietly that I imagine he would be lost on a stage.  Time will tell if this is just a ruse to seduce the audience into paying attention.  That said, I thought it worked fairly well for his tentative character in Gone Baby Gone.

Gone Baby Gone ~ The Score Card

The Movie : 8

Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) is a small time private detective who works with his partner/girlfriend Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan) to find missing persons.  He says, "I find people who started in the cracks – and then fell through."  When her 4-year old niece goes missing, desperate Bea McCready (Amy Madigan), seeing no results from Captain Jack Doyle (Morgan Freeman), implores Kenzie to help on the investigation.  Kenzie realizes from even before they start that he is way out of his league on this one, having no previous experience with kidnappings, though he knows the neighborhood and the "streets" and its low-life denizens.  But the tug of this particular case compels him to try.  He is told by Bea "at least you can do no harm."  Kenzie & Angie team up with two detectives (Ed Harris & John Ashton) who take them deep into the uglies that test their sense of morality and justice.