Gone Baby Gone

Once upon a time, when movies used to be epic blockbuster friendly, I was a film critic. I went to Hollywood screenings where my critical ilk were served up banquets and bought off with promotional material beyond press kits. We've come a long way from those days, baby. And since Hollywood's historical heyday, my tolerance for bad movies has gone. Besides that, bad reviews are more fun to write and a public service for mature discriminating fans who know better.

I liked the title of this picture. It easily lends itself to an action flick genre. And I went in not knowing what it was about. Upon leaving the theater however, I felt assaulted. As if I had been force fed a portrait of reality skewered by a low common denominator demographic vision of entertainment minus suspension of disbelief. To wit, a style of filmmaking that appeals to what marketing focus groups think is hip as opposed to what makes a believable saleable storyline.

Gone Baby Gone is the tale of a missing child in Boston and a foul mouth populace that goes out of its way to find her amidst a bevy of whirlwinded plot twists more worthy of a Victorian Age novel than 21st century cinema. First a local drug lord is said to have kidnapped her as ranson for money stolen from him. Then a family of child molestors pops up as suspects. Lastly, we find out it was an inside job the police chief was in on to adopt and save her from a bad mother.

Casey Affleck stars as a PI on the case who stands out like a sore thumb among so many ugly real people actors that you get the feeling this was done to support a lead too cute to carry the picture. It backfires. Casey has the kind of baby face that should be modeling clothes in retail store ads. He's no he-man hunk who belongs in an action picture. There are reason why actors are typecast. And that is to make sure movies are believable and not an exercise in vanity.

To make matters worse, cuss wordedness is the true star of GBG. As a plot device, one guesses it's supposed to add to the suspense and drama of a film already ruined by poor casting and bad screenwriting. Case in point. Family relatives refer to Affleck's interaction with the police investigation in vocabulary ill fitting working people who seem to shift to college verbiage in between lowbrow vulgarity. The only character who says no bad words is the lost child herself.

A list support in Morgan Freeman as the police chief and Ed Harris as a rogue detective accomplice doesn't save this from a hidden premise. That you must fall for a movie because of the morality of its subject matter and not the content of its character. Positive buzz on GBG must be based on paid media bias rather than natural word of mouth. In search of a free pass on social merit alone, Bay State homeboys Affleck send a bad message and they make The Hub look bad.

I grew up in New England. And it seems whenever Hollywood wants to make a working class suspense drama it defaults to Beantown accented stereotypes. The Afflecks and Damons can do their best work without setting their movie stages at home. Like thay say, you can never go home. And this is as evident on the sliver screen as it is in real life. If and when the Afflecks ever realize that, they may someday evolve into better filmmakers. But until then, my thumbs are down.