Editor Reviews:

Product Description:
Critics are calling Ben Affleck's directorial debut "mesmerizing" (Peter Travers ROLLING STONE). When two young private detectives (Casey Affleck (GOOD WILL HUNTING) and Michelle Monaghan MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE III) are hired to take a closer look into the mysterious disappearance of a little girl they soon unravel a multitude of twists and turns where nothing is what it seems. Ultimately they must risk everything -- their relationship their sanity and even their lives -- in the search to find her. Casey Affleck and Morgan Freeman are electrifying and Amy Ryan (CAPOTE) delivers "a vibrant knockout performance" (Kenneth Turan LOS ANGELES TIMES) in this edge-of-your-seat crime drama. GONE BABY GONE "will have you talking long after it's over" (Christy Lemire THE ASSOCIATED PRESS).System Requirements:Running Time: 114 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA/PSYCHOLOGICAL DRAMA Rating: R UPC: 786936727487 Manufacturer No: 05373800

Amazon.com:
For his initial offering as director, Ben Affleck returns to the site of his first Oscar: South Boston. (He and Matt Damon shared the award for Good Will Hunting.) Hot on the heels of his moving turn in Hollywoodland, Affleck's Dennis Lehane adaptation marks one of the more seamless actor-to-filmmaker transitions in recent years. Ostensibly, a procedural about the search for a missing child, class and corruption emerge as his primary concerns. First off, there's low-rent private eye Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck, equally adept in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford). Then there's the girl's drug mule mother, Helene (Amy Ryan, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead). She and Patrick grew up in Dorchester, but he took a different path, setting up an agency with his girlfriend, Angie (Michelle Monaghan). Helene's aunt, Bea (Amy Madigan), hires the duo to augment the investigation, and they team up with Captain Doyle (Morgan Freeman) and Detective Bressant (Madigan's husband, Ed Harris). The authorities don't appreciate the interference, but Patrick knows how to get the local populace talking, and he soon finds there's more to the story than anyone could possibly imagine. Hard-hitting, but never soft-headed, the evocative end result proves Affleck has a flair for this directing thing and that his little brother can carry a major motion picture with aplomb. Gone Baby Gone belongs on the list of great Boston crime dramas, along with The Departed and Mystic River, Clint Eastwood’s take on Lehane. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Rating : - Just don't read the book
After I read this book by Dennis Lehane, I went out and rented the movie. I wanted to see how the director portrayed some of the more interesting side characters in the plot. Cheese Olman for one. The book was full of Dennis Lehane's complex portrayals of interesting characters, and the quality of the plot twists were in line with other Dennis Lehane books, such as Mystic River. THAT movie, by the way, was a great adaptation of a great Lehane book.

I was appalled. The characters were so altered that I had no ability to compare these portrayals between the book and the movie. All characters became stereotypes reflecting today's typical scripts. I hope Dennis Lehane had no part in creating the script for this movie - it was dull, shallow, and the language unnecessarily went into the gutter, the characters were mutated to uninteresting ones with no depth. Even the characterization of the 2 main people, Angie and Patrick, made them shallow and dull.

The two most spectacular actors in the movie, Morgan Freeman and Ed Harris, were poorly directed. They had no depth and appeared to just read their lines - they are so much better than that. Amy Madigan was portrayed as a strident, witchy woman, very unlike her character as written.

The book will give you a much better understanding of all the characters. Don't waste your time with the movie.