Gone Baby Gone
(R)

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Single mom Helene (Amy Ryan) tells the detectives (John Aston and Ed Harris) what she recalls.

Gone Baby Gone, directed by Ben Affleck who also adapted Dennis Lehane's bristling novel, is a tough, nasty, riveting movie about the aftermath of the kidnapping of a four-year-old girl from a hardscrabble working class Boston suburb. Casey Affleck and Michelle Monaghan play a pair of hard luck private investigators, also lovers, who are persuaded by the little girl's aunt (Amy Madigan) to open an investigation they're reluctant to take on.

The detectives (Casey Affleck, Harris, Michelle Monaghan and Aston) follow a lead.

Their digging brings them head-to-head with Boston police veterans (Ed Harris and Morgan Freeman, among them) and leads them down mean streets thick with dive bars, drug lairs and roughneck neighborhood haunts -- all well-realized by Ben Affleck who clearly knows the Boston terrain and mindset -- and reveals along the way some pretty ugly truths about any number of people with whom the investigators come into contact, including each other.

It's that human quality, and sardonic humor, that give the movie an unexpected jolt beyond being a mere thriller about a troubling subject. Affleck directs with an admirable lack of look-at-me showiness and the actors are better served for their director's workmanlike attention to mood, atmosphere and the twisty interrelationships of a closely knit community.

Police captain Jack Doyle (Morgan Freeman) advises his detectives (Affleck and Monaghan).

Sure, the movie version of Lehane's Mystic River may have made all the noise because of its star power on both sides of the camera. But, this one, far less blustery and showy, has a greater ring of truth. Two Afflecks have made one of the best films of the year.

by Stephen Rebello

credit: Claire Folger/Courtesy of Miramax Films