Hollywood's favorite whipping boy Ben Affleck has returned - this time behind the camera - with his adaptation of author Dennis Lehane's Gone Baby Gone, from the series of novels about Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro.  This is the third recent crime drama set in Boston, following Scorsese's The Departed and Eastwood's Mystic River, which was also based on a Lehane novel.  Not exactly the easiest path to take for a first time director, especially one like Affleck, where - undeservedly, in my opinion - it often feels like people are actively rooting for him to fail.  So this is what it comes down to: did he come through when it counts?  Or has Affleck dropped the ball?

A four year old girl has gone missing in the neighborhood of Dorchester.  It's been three days and the cops are chasing their tails in frustration from the lack of progress, knowing that if they don't find her soon, they're not likely to.  Local private investigators Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) and Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan), partners and lovers, are approached by the little girl's aunt and uncle.  Beatrice and Lionel McCready (Amy Madigan and Titus Welliver) ask that Kenzie and Gennaro "augment" the investigation, realizing that in such a tight-knit neighborhood, local detectives such as these have a far greater chance of learning something, of being talked to in a way the cops wouldn't be.  So they take the case of finding little Amanda McCready.  Then they meet her mother.  Helene (Amy Ryan) is a real piece of work, a coked-up, selfish drunk with attitude and dead eyes.  Did her "job" as a drug mule have anything to do with Amanda's disappearance?  Or was it the fact that she helped to rob the dealer of over 100 thousand dollars?  Two police detectives assigned to the case, Remy Broussard (Ed Harris) and Nick Poole (a welcome return from John Ashton) certainly think it may have something to do with it.  Police chief Jack Doyle (Morgan Freeman) just wants the little girl found, as he knows the pain of losing a daughter to violence from personal experience, and doesn't want another family to suffer as his has.  But maybe the drug lord doesn't have anything to do with it; there's a pedophile who was recently released from prison who may be involved.  Maybe not.  What no one knows is that this case will change the lives of everyone who is drawn into it.  It will force them to confront some hard truths and make the kind of choices that could destroy them, and shatter any illusions they have about their convictions - about what's right and wrong.  Because on these streets, in this life, there is no such thing as an easy answer; such things don't exist down there.

Simply put, Gone Baby Gone is one of the best films I have seen in a long, long time.  The sense of time and place, of character and story, of honest and true drama isn't something the movie world gets enough of these days, and that is a shame.  Ben Affleck hasn't just made a decent flick that might be able to resurrect his career; I think what he's done is leaps and bounds beyond something that simple - he's made an instant classic for fans of intelligent, emotional fare for adults.  If I didn't already know it to be true, there's no way anyone would ever convince me that this was his first time directing.  He's made every right choice there is to be made and it looks easy even though when something comes together so seamlessly, there's no way that ease had anything to do with it.  Cinematographer and Academy Award winner John Toll gives the film the grit and you-are-there immediacy of Boston's hard streets (much credit is also due to production designer Sharon Seymour) - I've never been to Boston, but I sure feel like I have now, and not to the shiny, showy parts you'd see on a postcard, either.  These are working class neighborhoods, row houses and bars that open first thing in the morning, where the people are blue collar and have lived on the same block for their entire lives.  They're proud and work hard and take no shit from anybody.

The performances Ben gets from his actors prove that he knows a thing or two about how to get the best out of his cast.  And what a cast it is - good God.  We can all assume that Harris and Freeman are outstanding; since when have they given any less?  Both of them make their characters live and breathe as real people, flawed but doing their very best to do the right thing and help those in need.  Ashton has been away for far too long, and it's a real pleasure to see his no-frills style of truth back on the big screen.  Monaghan - although her role could stand to be a little bigger - is delivering on the promise she showed in Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang a couple years back.  She's very smart, strong, and someone you'd be proud to have as a partner, professionally AND personally.  Which leads us to the two actors who steal the picture whole: Amy Ryan and Casey Affleck.  The only thing I've seen Ryan in previously was the second season of The Wire, and she was fine but in no way prepared me for what she does here.  She's angry and sullen and pathetic and sad and not the greatest mother but she manages to earn a little empathy from us even when we're not sure she deserves it.  The greatest compliment I can pay her is that I have met people like Helene; I have known them and how they are and how they live, and Ryan has absolutely NAILED it.  She is this person, to her very core, in this movie.  If she doesn't get nominated for Best Supporting Actress, then the Oscars have officially lost all meaning.  It's also official that Casey Affleck is having one hell of a year.  Word on the street is that he's all kinds of superb in The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, and all I have to say about that is if he's half as good there as he is here, then we're witnessing the emergence of a true talent.  As Patrick, Casey never hits a single false note that I could see.  Subtle and dialed down where lesser actors would jump at the chance to overact and froth at the mouth, he's got the perfect mix of street-smarts and inexperience, who knows how he's percieved and can't help but overcompensate for it sometimes.  The chip on this young man's shoulder is mammoth, truly; he's got a lot to prove to the neighborhood, Angie, and himself.  He's not a Superman, he's smart enough to be scared when he should be but he's gonna do what he thinks is right, and you can see all of this in Casey's eyes, where all of the truly hard work (and good acting) is.  Based on this flick it would seem that Casey is the Affleck who should be in front of the camera, and Ben's definitely got the chops to stay behind it.  Although to be fair, I don't believe that Ben is anywhere near as bad as others say - anybody see Changing Lanes?  And yeah, I kinda love Daredevil, so what?

Not enough movies really make you THINK anymore.  The kind that has you talking as you leave the theater, debating on the ride home or over a meal, and pondering for hours after it's over.  This movie did that to me, and it's mostly because of the questions it raises as it comes to an end.  Those easy answers that don't exist?  I'm not even sure if I have any answer regarding the moral dilemmas this flick poses.  That doesn't happen to me when I'm watching something; there's usually a defined right, and a clear wrong.  Yet I've been thinking about the end of this movie since I saw it and I keep going back and forth, back and forth.  Any movie that forces me to do that is something special, in my opinion.

So Ben came out on top.  He proved that he can handle shootouts that aren't inserted into the story to spice things up, that his film would feature speeches that don't stop the flick dead in its tracks but instead feel organic and truthful to the characters and the story.  He surrounded himself with the best talent he could, and showed the naysayers who doubted him or thought he was stupid casting his little brother that he knew exactly what he was doing and that nepotism had nothing to do with it; that quality was what it was all about from the very beginning.  And the end result is nothing more or less than one of the best movies of this year or any other.  Gone Baby Gone is a thrilling example of a crime drama done very, very right.  It has the power to shake you to your core.  The last shot is silently devastating and feels like you've been hit over the head.  It reminds us that we're all human and thus imperfect, but even if we fail to make sense of the insanity down here, we can keep reaching.  For all of that, I am very thankful.