Review of: Gone Baby Gone

So for my first real movie review I just picked the movie that I saw most recently. That would be Gone Baby Gone. Let me just say that Casey Affleck is slowly growing into one of my favorite actors of this young millennium. He also shone through in his brief appearances in the Oceans movies and his breakthrough role in the Jesse James flick really made me eager to see anything Casey Affleck. I kind of put aside the fact that his brother is Ben Affleck who would be in my top 5 least favorite actors. With that being said Ben had a huge hand in the making of this movie and should be somewhat commended for it.

Casey Affleck is one of those actors that doesn't fit the leading man, Brad Pitt, George Clooney Mel Gibson, traditional role. He's not the 6'2" chiseled Adonis body actor that will star in any action flicks but he definitely proved in this one that he has the acting chops to handle a starring role.

Let me just briefly add that I will also watch anything and everything that has OMAR in it and if you don't know who OMAR is you better look him up...ha ha.

As for the flick it has the same style and feel as Mystic River, and I'm pretty sure it was shot in roughly the same small town. Brief plot description without giving away anything is this - Affleck and his wife in the movie are small time detectives that are hired to supplement a police investigation into a missing girl. The girls mother is played by Amy Adams, another Wire star, who surprisingly does a 180 from her Wire character and plays a strung out coke addict in this one. If I'm not mistaken she was also nominated for Best Supporting Actress for this role. The cops who are "in charge" of the operation are played by Ed Harris, Morgan Freeman, and one of the ultimate "that guys", Taggert from Beverly Hills Cop. I probably haven't seen him in a role since then and it took me a second to figure out where he was from. The movie follows your standard kidnapping plot for the most part, even including some weird pedophiles and cool drug dealers. I won't give away anything else and I'm sure the ending will surprise some, as even I didn't predict what would happen at the end.

All in all a very decent flick and I would recommend you guys go out and rent/buy it.

This movie gets the first official REEL JUDGES verdict. As a reminder the way it works is this:

guilty - go and see it, 2 thumbs up, guilty pleasure
not guilty - avoid at all costs, 2 thumbs down
hung jury - 1 thumb up, go see if you're bored, you may like it


Gone Baby Gone is = GUILTY