"I really feel, as far as talent is concerned, this is the most talented team that I've been part of as a whole, but the most unproven, inexperienced team that I've ever played on" ~ Brett Farve about the 4-12 2006 Packers (In 2007 that team made it to the NFC Championship game)
Ben Affleck is one of the most underrated artists in Hollywood. I guess that's because he's appeared in such gems as Gigli, Forces of Nature, and Daredevil. But for every throw away performance there's a knockout performance in a movie like Dogma, Shakespeare in Love or Hollywoodland. On top of that, he's an Oscar winning screenwriter. With Gone Baby Gone he's added director to his resume and at this point I'm drawing a line in sand; Ben Affleck is one of the most important artist working in Hollywood.
Gone Baby Gone is one of those rare movies that is satisfying on every level. The cast is incredible. At the helm is Ben's little brother Casey who picked up his first Oscar (Best Supporting Actor) nod this year for his performance in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, but he could have easily snagged a Best Actor nod for his turn as Patrick Kenzie in Gone Baby Gone. The younger Affleck more than holds his own against acting giants Morgan Freeman (who plays police Captain Jack Doyle), and Ed Harris (as Detective Remy Bressant). Amy Ryan (who I fell in love with as Beadie on the The Wire) puts in an Oscar nominated performance as Helene McCready the drug-addicted mother of a little girl who's gone missing.
The movie's characters are brilliantly drawn. Patrick Kenzie is a young recently minted Private Detective who's spent his entire life in the same South Boston neighborhood. Family and community are the most important drivers of his life. He's a good guy but he comes from the streets, so he looks like a push over, but if you try him he'll lay you out flat. Patrick's girlfriend, Angie Gennaro (played by the beautiful and talented Michelle Monaghan), is his high school sweetheart and perfect foil. She loves Patrick deeply, but is firmly her own person.
We meet the rest of the characters when a little girl, Amanda McCready, has gone missing from Patrick's and Amanda's neighborhood. The girl's aunt, Bea McCready, who has basically raised Amanda, hires Patrick and Angie to work the neighborhood angle of the case. Her husband, Lionel (played by Titus Welliver) also loves Amanda as his own child and his sister Helene is Amanda's negligent mother. The police detective assigned to the case, Ramy Bressant is a harden officer who sees Patrick as an inexperienced hack who will muddle the investigation and his superior Captain Jack Doyle feels the same way. In each character's arc we see how their innate belief structure causes them to make decisions that push the story in interesting and unforeseeable ways.
The plot is chocked full of twists and turns that kept me on the edge of my seat. The witty, biting south Boston inflected dialogue is always crisp and relevant. The move hums with a urgent intensity that consistently highlights the gravity of the moral dilemmas the movie grapples with. There are no easy answers at the end of this film and the choices the characters make expose the complex inter-workings of family and community.
A movie that gets it right on so many levels should have been honored much more that it has been. The script is phenomenal and Ben Affleck and Aaron Stockard should be up for best adapted screenplay. They aren't. Casey Affleck anchors this film and he should be up for best Actor. He isn't (but his best supporting nod could partially be for this role). And finally, the movie should be up for Best Picture. It isn't.
The Academy has been ignoring Ben Affleck because he's decided to make a lot of money by appearing in marginal movies, but it's time for them to stop underestimating him. They sort of saw his potential when they gave him and his friend Matt Damon Oscars for writing Good Will Hunting but (not so) secretly believed that Matt just put Ben's name on the script because they were pals. Now, Ben Affleck has made one of the best movies of the year, a movie about what happens when you underestimate a person of true talent and substance, and its his statement that no matter what Hollywood thinks, he's an artist of great power who will shape the movies for a long time to come.
2 comments:
You know who agrees with you? Kevin Smith. In both of his "made for dvd" specials he takes time to talk about how Ben is an amazing actor who can do anything. Even play the shark in Jaws.
Now that I've seen this movie (your post about it was in my head while I watched it), even though it was on a plane, I thought "well shit, the academy missed this one."
Maybe its the drugs or the ugliness of the people in a lot of the film that made the academy stop it halfway, but rarely have I seen such a bitingly real and conflict rich film. Working for an organization that tries to protect children, I found myself struggling internally with the same questions Patrick was asking himself.
I would highly recommend it, though not for a light hearted night out.
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