Thriller With Vice-Like Grip
A rt REFLECTS real life: sometimes with affection, sometimes with brutal honesty that sends a chill down the spine. Gone Baby Gone, a hard-hitting adaptation of the Dennis Lehane thriller about the abduction of a four-year-old girl, was scheduled for release in December last year, only to be postponed due to similarities to the Madeleine McCann case.
The child in the film was almost the same age, the character’s name slightly similar (Amanda McCready) and, in a spooky twist, the young actress playing the pivotal role was called Madeline.
With another six months having passed, including the one-year anniversary of Madeleine’s disappearance, Ben Affleck’s directorial debut finally opens at UK cinemas laden with numerous awards, including an Oscar nomination for Amy Ryan as Best Supporting Actress.
The plaudits are well deserved. Gone Baby Gone is a riveting tale of corruption and twisted love, sharply scripted by Affleck and long- time friend Aaron Stockard, with tour de force performances from a stellar cast led by the director’s brother.
Affleck and cinematographer John Toll capture the rough and tumble of Boston by shooting on location, employing local people in minor roles to give the peripheral characters a gritty authenticity which begins with the distinctive, thick drawl.
It is in one of the city’s poorest neighbourhoods that little Amanda (O’Brien) vanishes without trace from her bedroom.
The girl’s mother, Helene (Ryan), makes a television appeal for her safe return while police swamp the scene, led by Captain Jack Doyle (Freeman).
Frustrated by the lack of police progress, the girl’s feisty grandmother Bea (Madigan) enlists the services of private investigators Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) and Angie Gennaro (Monaghan) to make their own enquiries.
The pair have contacts in the city’s underbelly who would never share information with the police.
As they gather evidence about the missing child’s final hours, Patrick and Angie forge an uneasy alliance with renegade cop Detective Remy Bressant (Harris) and his partner, Detective Nick Poole (Ashton).
Together, the quartet exposes a web of deceit and lies which appears to implicate everyone involved in the case.
From its opening scenes of city life accompanied by Patrick’s voiceover (“I find people who started in the cracks… and fell through”), Gone Baby Gone holds us in a vice-like grip as the investigation twists and turns with horrific repercussions.
It’s a deliberate slow burn, but director Affleck confidently injects pace with a couple of expertly choreographed action set pieces.
They include a botched night-time ransom drop and a nerve- racking shoot-out in the house of a suspected child abuser.
Performances are excellent across the board, from Casey Affleck’s somewhat naive and doomed hero to Ryan’s ballsy portrayal of a foul- mouthed drug addict who may not be fit to raise her child.
The narrative wrong-foots us to the closing frames, when one character faces an agonising moral dilemma that will provoke heated debate for weeks to come.
S OMEBODY ought to explain to filmmaker Craig Mazin that in Hollywood, you have to respond quickly to audiences’ changing tastes. It’s vital to strike while the iron is hot, especially with vast sums of money riding on the opening weekend box office.
So writing and directing a spoof of Spider-Man, complete with a smutty recreation of the upside down kiss in the rain, some six years after the web-slinging superhero first swung on to the big screen, is a completely pointless exercise.
Yet here we have this tongue-in-cheek romp of good versus evil that also takes half-hearted jabs at X-Men, Superman and Fantastic Four among others.
Even if Mazin’s film could boast a multitude of polished one- liners and inspired visual jokes – which it can’t – there’s no escaping the fact that Superhero Movie far exceeds its sell-by date and should be flung into the nearest dustbin.
During a class trip, student Rick Riker (Bell) is bitten by a genetically engineered dragonfly, investing him with the nifty superpowers of the creature.
Struggling to conceal his secret identity as the masked Dragonfly from Uncle Albert (Nielsen) and Aunt Lucille (Ross), Rick puts his new found skills to good use and sweeps next-door neighbour Jill (Paxton) off her feet.
Unfortunately, Dragonfly meets his match in The Hourglass – the dastardly alter ego of the megalomaniac Dr Lou Lander (McDonald).
“You’re crazy,” shrieks one of Lander’s goons. “No, crazy is hearing voices, talking cats, dating Paula Abdul,” rages the doctor, “I’m a visionary.”
The scene is lazily set for a titanic battle in chafing Lycra for the future of mankind.
Superhero Movie delivers its biggest laugh with that hoary old chestnut, the fart gag, while Rick and Jill play out a drippy love scene.
“Oh, Jill, don’t cry…” whispers Rick tenderly. “I’m not, my eyes are burning,” sobs Jill, gasping for air as an exceedingly flatulent Aunt Lucille lets rip.
That’s as sophisticated as the humour gets, with Mazin, who co- wrote Scary Movie 3 and Scary Movie 4 – taking aim at all the obvious targets, even cajoling Pamela Anderson into a thankless cameo as The Invisible Girl.
A parody of Tom Cruise fails to raise a chuckle and the relentless mockery of Dr Stephen Hawking (a synthesised Robert Joy) is one oafish parody too far.
Teen icon Bell, star of the sitcom double act Drake & Josh, stares blankly into the camera as mayhem descends all around him.
Disappointingly, McDonald chews far less scenery as the chief villain than Naked Gun funnyman Nielsen, who delivers his usual goofy performance as the daft old coot who confides to his nephew: “I believe in you like your father did, I love you like your father did, I had sex with your mother just like your father did.”
Too much information – alas, none of it interesting.
(c) 2008 Western Morning News, The Plymouth (UK). Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.