Gone Baby Gone is a good fucking movie. How good? I'm starting to wish Project Greenlight hadn't been such an unredeemable failure so maybe there was a chance I could get one of my scripts to Ben Affleck to direct.
That's how good.
I'd call it better than both Mystic River and especially The Departed, two films to which it can easily be compared. Yes, I'm saying Ben Affleck made a better movie than Clint Eastwood or Martin Scorsese.
I'll stand by that. And I thought Mystic River was choice ; deserved its awards. Although that Scorsese "finally" won the Academy Award for the film he did is, I think, going to turn out to be one of the greater ironies of film history. But there's irony to go all around here.
Affleck won an Oscar for co-writing Good Will Hunting, but deserves at least two nominations (directing and-co-writing, with Aaron Stockard from Dennis Lehane's novel) for this. Amy Ryan is a nominee for best supporting actress-but I have to believe voters just spread out 8x10's of the film's stars, closed their eyes and pointed to decide who among the uniformly impressive cast they should honor.
I mean look at this cast: Morgan Freeman, Ed Harris, John Ashton...with Casey Affleck and Michelle Monaghan holding their own with them. That's how good.
First-season-of-Veronica Mars good (that's for you, Corey).
The story is a very literal moral nightmare. And there's a line at the end which-well I don't want to tell you what it is, because there's no way of doing that without spoiling it for you. This is a film that stayed at least half a jump ahead of me at nearly every turn, and you should experience it the same way. So I'll be vague.
But there's a line at the end which, just within the context of the film, is heartbreaking. But for me, personally, it's one of those "Ben Affleck hacked into my computer!" moments...and I mean that in a good way.
As with Shoot 'Em Up--a film it otherwise resembles in virtually no way whatsoever--I'm inclined to view the fact that this movie was ignored at the box office as an indictment of the public.
I'm saying this is a great film.
That's how good.
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