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88The result is a superior police procedural, and something more -- a study in devious human nature.
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88Gone Baby Gone is powerful stuff - a movie that derives its plot twists from moral conundrums rather than from narrative sleight of hand.
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75Fans of Lehane's Kenzie-Gennaro books will lament the fact that starting with the fourth book means losing the couple's extensive backstory, but the essence of their fragile, damaged bond comes through even if you don't know what shaped it.
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75For all of Affleck's skill, he can't entirely put over a credulity-straining ending that probably worked better on the printed page. At the same time, the deeply disturbing windup of "Gone Baby Gone" is a real talker. And that's not something you can say about many movies these days.
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88Gone Baby Gone is full of dark secrets, and how they unravel will keep you glued.
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75A story so good that maybe anybody could have turned out something decent.
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67Affleck the director shows excellent instincts, not least of which is letting his younger brother, Casey, hold the center as a young guy not as smaht as he thinks he is.
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88The joke's on us, it turns out; as a director, Affleck has come through with a sharp, morally ambiguous piece of pulp crackerjack.
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70By and large a notable piece of work, a strong directing debut by actor Ben Affleck that highlights attention-getting performances...But, as adapted from the novel by Dennis Lehane, this brooding, somber film is also ragged around the edges and not without problematic aspects.
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50Storytelling problems surface toward the overwrought climax, but the worst problem is the unrelenting grimness. It's hard to like a movie that leaves you with no hope.
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88There is a compelling ethical question raised skillfully that will haunt viewers. The poignant conclusion probably will incite debate.
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75Casey's big brother has made a tough, taut mystery.
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80Ben Affleck directed and cowrote the script; his biggest gamble was casting his irksome little brother as a pistol-whipping tough guy, but the picture is so superbly executed in every other respect that Casey seems more quirky than miscast.
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75The film's standout performance belongs to Ed Harris, who plays a Boston detective with decades of experience and an equal amount of built-up resentment toward people who would harm children.
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88Gone Baby Gone would be an accomplishment with anyone at the helm; from a first-timer, it's a revelation.
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67As a leading man, Casey Affleck has a nebbishy quality and a mumbly speaking voice that I personally find disruptive to a movie's flow.
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83It's a fine debut, far more grounded, plausible and engrossing than most Hollywood thrillers.
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91Though its procedural goes a little soft in the middle, Gone Baby Gone quietly accumulates in power, leading to one of the more subtly devastating final shots in recent memory.
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63Very few movies end so much better than they begin. For that reason, and only that reason, this is an exceptional picture.
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63The film is reasonably effective all the same, though Affleck has yet to learn how to conduct each scene like a musical score, paying attention to matters of tempo and dynamics.
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67The story is patently implausible and unnecessarily confusing, and it works to a moral dilemma for its hero -- and a trick ending for the audience -- that resolves the action with so little satisfaction that you wish they hadn't bothered.
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83In the strongest scenes, Ben Affleck gets his lead actors to extract the bitter juice from Lehane's wood-alcohol prose. The movie has its horrifying Gothic twists and turns, but it's never better than when it takes these two into places where the underclass goes to forget or be forgotten or get lost.
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60Ben Affleck is smart about setting the scene -- he's even better at it than Clint Eastwood was in another Lehane adaptation, "Mystic River." But he's less adept at defining individual personalities, at making us care about the characters who deserve our sympathy -- or, maybe more important, the ones who don't.
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80One of the graces of Gone Baby Gone is its sensitivity to real struggle, to the lived-in spaces and worn-out consciences that can come when despair turns into nihilism.
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70The movie is taut, fast, achingly authentic and terribly melancholy.
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70Casey Affleck has never had a pedestal like the one his brother provides him, and he earns it. His Patrick is pale and raspy, with a slight grogginess that gives him an astounding vulnerability--and makes his bursts of temper shocking.
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75The only real casualty of Lehane's novel is Angie, here reduced to a supporting player who bears no resemblance to the original character, who is every bit as smart and tough and interesting as her boyfriend. It's a regrettable loss in a film that otherwise indicates its first-time director knows what he's doing.
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60Ben Affleck probably respects Lehane the genre writer (there are five books with Patrick Kenzie as the hero) more than he should. He also has some way to go before he becomes a good director of action.
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63It's been well-publicized that Affleck, going for as authentic a feel as possible, cast many genuine South Bostoners in both extra and speaking roles, and, while that's salutary, in some scenes his strategy backfires, yielding caricatures that are merely more vivid than the ones turned out by Central Casting Hollywood productions.
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70Doesn’t always hit all the right notes...But in the end, Affleck displays a surprisingly sure hand, and Gone Baby Gone largely delivers.