Gone Baby Gone was the directorial debut from Ben "Ben Affleck" Affleck, adapted from a book that I'm almost certain was better than the movie, but which gave the movie enough spine to stand up pretty well. It's a kidnapping story set in a poor Boston neighbourhood that works remarkably well when it's trying to be "gritty" and "real", mostly thanks to some fine, blunt acting from the cast. Although the plot is good, Affleck's handling of the denouement and the unravelling of the story's threads is just plain clumsy. Black and white flashbacks, voice overs of relevant lines from earlier in the movie... most Law & Order episodes are more subtle. However it stands up for me, on two accounts: 1) there's a really nicely handled ethical dilemma at the heart of it, and 2) there's some awesome swearing.
Seriously, I'm disappointed to find that IMDB didn't have memorable quotes from the bit where Casey Affleck tells the bartender to "make me a martini you fat fucking retard", or the bit where the cop interviewing him calls him "a fresh prick" (one of my favourite cop insults). It does have the bit where Affleck tells a kid to get out of the road and the kid tells him to go fuck his mother though, that's something.
