Word: afflecks
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...Affleck has gone and challenged our neat picture of him as movie-star chump by directing and co-writing a crackling little detective film about child abduction, Gone Baby Gone. In poker, this is known as going all in. First, the movie is an adaptation of a novel by Dennis Lehane, who also wrote Mystic River, which Clint Eastwood put on film to much critical acclaim. Comparisons are inevitable. Second, the movie features imperiled children, spectacularly vulgar language and the urban poor of Boston, none of which scream must-see. Third, he cast his younger brother Casey as the lead...
...Affleck worried? He looks positively pained as he sits in a deserted midtown New York City restaurant in his three-stripe Adidas jacket and heavily pocketed khakis. It turns out he spent the morning at a children's museum, put a little too much enthusiasm into picking up his 22-month-old daughter Violet (with wife Jennifer Garner) and threw out his back. The tenderness is not just around the lumbar region, however. He's cautious. The a≠able, self-deprecating, funny guest of Jay Leno or Jon Stewart is not here today. This is a man who warily...
...walk around carrying a bunch of regrets," says Affleck about his stint as a tabloid fixture. "There are things that I haven't quite figured out. I don't know enough to say that I've come to any certain conclusions other than that I prefer to be where I am now." Clearly, the public adulation turned savagery that he experienced has left him changed. In a line from the movie that's not in the book, Casey's character, Patrick Kenzie, quotes Matthew 10: 16: "Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves...
...This Weltschmerz and wariness seeps through Gone, from its opening shots of a media maelstrom in a poor part of Affleck's hometown of Boston to its final scene of a man coming to terms with the consequences of decisions he's made. None of the characters are innocent to begin with, but they lose whatever naiveté they have in the course of the film. Yet Gone Baby Gone has a lightness and humor to it. At one point, Ed Harris' police detective dismissively suggests that the young-looking Kenzie should forget the case and get back...
...Affleck clearly spent most of the less than $20 million budget on giving the actors plenty of time to perfect their swing rather than on effects or fancy camera shots. Casey indeed nails it as the punk who's always having to punch above his weight, and there's a jaw-dropping performance from the not- well-known Amy Ryan as possibly the coarsest woman on the Eastern seaboard...