Gone Baby Gone Revisited

This is the autumn of Casey Affleck," Ben Affleck told one of his hometown papers early last month in a phone call from the Deauville Film Festival, "His career is really going to blow up."

He may have something there. With reviewers like The Hollywood Reporter's Stephen Farber raving-" [Gone Baby Gone] faces an uphill battle at the box-office. But it's going to be remembered as one of the best crime movies of this decade."--both brothers have come up big on this one. Even after a fine performance in Hollywoodland, the elder Affleck has still been looking for a full parole from movie jail. The irony is that a picture for which he acquired the rights four years ago, presumably as a vehicle he might star in with J Lo, has worked out so infinitely better than say, doing Gigli as Bennifer.

He and distributor Buena Vista have behaved with the entirely proper restraint in holding off what was to be the English release while that nation and much of the world focuses--much as in the film but with real-world consequences this time--on the disappearance of a little girl. That the actress playing the role of the missing child in Gone Baby Gone is named Madeline O'Brien, and looks much like the real-life Madeleine McCann, synergizes with certain plot complications in the film to make for a queasy resonance.

Despite a good deal of violence and some elements that might have been sensationalized, Affleck hewed to a non-exploitative approach, embracing the local culture and sights--including some extended looks at local barroom faces that resemble, in D.P. John Toll's hands, the work of a Dutch master.

Casey Affleck plays most of the picture being gouged by dilemmas, and his dyspeptic air stays with him even during his best speech, a tirade against a Haitian thug who's holding a gun on him. It's a spiel that recalls the boardroom speech made by Matt Damon in that other Boston film for which Affleck shared the screenplay Oscar, Good Will Hunting. Though Casey has said he was only 51 percent convinced he could do the role justice after his brother flew up to Canada to pitch it to him, he carries this moment and many others off expertly. "I grew to like [his character] and feel he was like me in many ways," Casey told the crowd at the screening covered in this space recently. What's more, inn the moment where the film's moral dilemma comes into sharp focus, says Casey, "I feel he made the right decision."

Casey got the evening's big laugh when he opined that Morgan Freeman's Doyle character may not be suited to a certain task, then after a beat added, "Maybe the real Morgan Freeman" would be.

Given novelist David Lehane's Dorchester roots and Affleck's' previous immersion in the tough streets of Southie in Good Will Hunting, a sense of place means much to this film's success. To the Europeans who have complained that the Dot Rat (Dorchesterite) accents are hard to understand, Affleck has replied, "This is Boston's revenge for [Guy Ritchie's Cockney and Gypsy-babbling] Snatch." Local rapper Dickie Skinz (whose Sik Pup label just released a Red Sox-themed single in time for the playoffs) is bested only by another local rapper, Slaine, in street authenticity.

Yet another benefit of staying local is the state of Massachusetts's new and generous tax credits for film production, up to a quarter of the film's expenditures in tax credits. Thus a Disney spokesperson kvells on the state site, "Disney spent $50 million in Massachusetts in 2006 and got 10 million in tax credits -which made a huge difference to out bottom line."

The bottom line for both brothers is a leap forward into the rest of their careers, perhaps even in tandem again. The younger brother capped his answer to a question as to whether being a director changed Ben by saying, not quite poker faced, "Well, he didn't put on a cowboy hat and tuck his pants into his boots."

(Casey (l.) and Ben Affleck; Photo by Eric Charbonneau /WireImage)