Saving Ben's bacon ... Gone Baby Gone
The critics reckon Ben Affleck's debut in the director's chair is a colourful peek into low-rent Boston which also manages to be a compelling thriller.
Casey Affleck draws rave reviews as a private eye investigating the disappearance of a young girl in his own neighbourhood, while the Oscar-nominated Amy Ryan also comes in for huge praise. There is, however, just a tiny bit of dispute over whether the movie's denouement is too crazy for comfort.
"This is a superior, haunting thriller of abduction, deception and ethical dilemma with a sobering ending," writes Empire's Angie Errigo. "A moral quandary that demands strong debate outside the cinema."
"The Oscar-nominated Ryan is fantastic, creating a character who's at once fearsome and pathetic," writes Jessica Winter in Time Out. "The rub, though, is that the film's compelling ambiguities come to a head in a final, puzzle-solving final reel development that is so mawkishly convoluted and screamingly absurd that it threatens to upend all the fine work that went before it."
"Ben Affleck, here making an accomplished directorial debut, isn't interested in stirring such obvious feelings as rage or relief," writes the Sunday Times' Cosmo Landesman. "Instead, he has created a gripping film that uses the disappearance of a child to explore the disappearance of the basic decencies within adult society."
Finally, our own Peter Bradshaw reckons Ben Affleck "may possibly have saved his career in the improbable role of director".
He adds: "In Hollywood's cut-throat world, talents are not generally allowed to blow it more than once, but Affleck has somehow been given chance after chance. Here he appears at last to have a success on his hands with this watchable, sure-footed, if melodramatic cop procedural about child abduction."
Have you seen Gone Baby Gone? Is it good enough to forgive Ben Affleck for his past sins? Or do you still harbour a grudge over Gigli?
