Dir. Ben
Affleck, US, 2008, 114 mins
Cast: Casey Affleck, Michelle Monaghan, Amy Ryan, Morgan
Freeman, Ed Harris
Review by Joyce Dundas
Ben Affleck's directorial debut is an accomplished
adaptation of a Dennis Lehane (Mystic River) novel. It deals
with an extremely topical subject the abduction of a four-year-old
girl Amanda from her bed and Affleck decided to delay the
release of the film in the UK due to the echoes of the Madeleine
McCann case. The film is a work of fiction, but with such
an emotive subject it is impossible to ignore the resonance
in real life.
However, the plot of this film couldn't be more different
than that of the McCann case. The plot takes numerous twists
and turns as the story of little Amanda's kidnapping slowly
comes to light.
Casey Affleck, Ben's younger brother,
plays the baby-faced missing persons' detective Patrick
Kenzie hired by the child's aunt to “augment” the
police investigation. She thinks, quite rightly, that people
who might not talk to the police will talk to him a local
boy born and bred in the working-class Boston neighbourhood
of Dorchester where the little girl lives. He and his girlfriend
Angie Gennaro (Monaghan) take the case after an emotional
appeal to do so by the little girl's Aunt Bea (Amy Madigan).
And quite quickly, using his streetwise ken and long-established
local relationships, he finds out that not all is as it
seems, especially where Amanda's mum Helene (an amazing
performance by Amy Ryan) is concerned.
The police are not impressed by this interloper messing
around in their investigation, but it is a done deal and
their own enquiries have turned up only one possible lead.
Cue the police liaison detectives whom the captain in charge
of the search Jack Doyle (Freeman) have assigned to keep
Patrick informed on what they have turned up. Remy Bressant
(Harris) and Nick Poole (John Ashton) are the two seasoned
detectives who, we are in no doubt, will do anything to track
down Amanda's kidnappers. It is clear all three of these
characters have interesting, but complicated back stories.
Each of them also has their own motivation and method for
getting the job done. It is easy to think that Patrick would
be out of his depth with these guys and it is around this
time we get a glimpse into his own back story. This babyfaced
man might have escaped the worst the neighbourhood had to
offer, but it seems that at one point in his past it might
have been touch and go.
Patrick's meeting with Bressant and
Poole moves their investigation in a completely new direction.
Bressant's subsequent interrogation of Helene is both darkly
funny and extremely hard-hitting. Her protests that she “might” know
a local gang leader and drug lord called Cheese leads to
a wonderful speech by Bressant which moves her to disclose
something that could explain the whole chain of events.
This, however, is only the first twist in this labyrinthine
plot. Patrick's encounter with the truly frightening Cheese
is a marvellous scene,which takes the plot in a more explosive
direction, even if the stylised language is hard to understand.
Affleck uses his characters and locations to bring an extremely
important subject, crimes against children, to the forefront
without the histrionics of Mystic River and without making
this a Message movie. The use of dark and intelligent humour
is a brilliant device. And Patrick is just the kind of solid,
but motivated, person you want on your side. When the action
turns more violent and shots are flying he has to make the
first of two life-changing decisions. His agonising afterwards
over that decision is palpable.
It's impossible to divulge Amanda's fate without completely
destroying the impact of the film, but this is an extremely
human story and sometimes the decisions we have to make cannot
always be expressed in black and white. This whole film looks
at those decisions that have to made in the huge grey area
in between.
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