| 91 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Though 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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| 88 |
ReelViews
Gone 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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| 88 |
USA Today
There is a compelling ethical question raised skillfully that will haunt viewers. The poignant conclusion probably will incite debate.
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| 88 |
Rolling Stone
Gone Baby Gone is full of dark secrets, and how they unravel will keep you glued.
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| 88 |
Chicago Sun-Times
The result is a superior police procedural, and something more -- a study in devious human nature.
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| 88 |
Boston Globe
The 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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| 88 |
Charlotte Observer
Gone Baby Gone would be an accomplishment with anyone at the helm; from a first-timer, it's a revelation.
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| 83 |
Portland Oregonian
It's a fine debut, far more grounded, plausible and engrossing than most Hollywood thrillers.
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| 83 |
Baltimore Sun
In 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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| 80 |
Chicago Reader
Ben 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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| 80 |
The New York Times
One 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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| 80 |
The Hollywood Reporter
Stephen Farber
It's a tribute to this thoughtful, deeply poignant, splendidly executed film that we replay the conclusion in our minds long after the lights come on.
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| 80 |
Village Voice
Jim Ridley
In his strikingly downbeat directorial debut, Affleck has created something of a blue-moon rarity: an American movie of genuine moral complexity.
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| 75 |
TV Guide
Fans 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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| 75 |
New York Post
For 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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| 75 |
San Francisco Chronicle
A story so good that maybe anybody could have turned out something decent.
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| 75 |
Miami Herald
The 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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| 75 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
Casey's big brother has made a tough, taut mystery.
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| 75 |
New York Daily News
The 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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| 70 |
Film Threat
Doesn’t always hit all the right notes...But in the end, Affleck displays a surprisingly sure hand, and Gone Baby Gone largely delivers.
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| 70 |
Los Angeles Times
By 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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| 70 |
Washington Post
The movie is taut, fast, achingly authentic and terribly melancholy.
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| 70 |
Variety
Moral ambiguity is the real star of Ben Affleck's helming debut, Gone Baby Gone, an involving Boston-set tale of mixed motives, selflessness and perfidy in the wake of a 4-year-old girl's disappearance.
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| 70 |
New York Magazine
Casey 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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| 67 |
Entertainment Weekly
Affleck 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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| 67 |
Austin Chronicle
As a leading man, Casey Affleck has a nebbishy quality and a mumbly speaking voice that I personally find disruptive to a movie's flow.
|
| 67 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
The 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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| 63 |
Chicago Tribune
The 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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| 63 |
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Very 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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| 63 |
Premiere
It'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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| 60 |
The New Yorker
Ben 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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| 60 |
Salon.com
Ben 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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| 50 |
Wall Street Journal
Storytelling 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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