The Tripod

Casey Affleck plays a detective in Ben Affleck's directorial debut, Gone Baby Gone. imdb.com

In Gone Baby Gone, Ben Affleck makes his directing debut, adapting the Dennis Lehane mystery novel of the same name and casting his younger brother Casey Affleck in the leading role.

Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) is a private detective who specializes in finding small-time petty thieves who slip through the cracks, avoiding their debts and the law in crime-ridden Dorchester. This tough Boston neighborhood is a foul-mouthed, tight knit community that is turned upside-down when a four-year-old girl named Amanda McCready goes missing. Amanda is taken from her home while her mother, Helene (Amy Ryan) is next door. Her mother leaves their tiny apartment for a few minutes, and comes back to find Amanda missing.

Later that night, when Amanda still hasn't been found, she calls the police. Soon after, the news crews show up and camp on her lawn, waiting to film her message to the kidnappers. The family promises they will not press charges as long as Amanda is returned to them.

After three days the police have few leads. The girl's aunt, Beatrice McCready, begs 31-year-old missing persons' detective Patrick and his live-in girlfriend Angela (Michelle Monaghan) to open an investigation.

Affleck plays a convincing young detective that admits to having little experience with finding children. He has a young face and soon gets in over his head asking questions of the people in the neighborhood who won't talk to the cops. Patrick and Angela reluctantly accept the case under the impression that two more people looking for a lost girl could do no harm. Patrick risks everything to find her and learns an all-important lesson in the process --- everything changes when there's a little girl's life in your hands.

Director of photography John Toll captures an iconic picture of Dorchester as the camera pans across long white stoops with girls in tight clothes assuming relaxed suggestive postures. Reporters continue to park their vans in the street to cover the story of the missing girl. One man reports in front of a camera crew wearing just the top portion of a three piece suit and standing on a soda box in navy Bermuda shorts. With constant news coverage of the tragedy it becomes more apparent that the neighborhood is no place for an innocent girl.

Patrick gets some information out of a high school friend in a bar about the case. He discovers the girl's mother lied to the police and had, in fact, left Amanda by herself for hours as she did lines of cocaine in a bar bathroom with her boyfriend.

With this new information, Patrick meets the other police officers assigned to the girl's case, Detective Remy Bressant (Ed Harris) and his partner Nick Poole (John Ashton), to track down a pedophile.

With this new angle, the detectives interview the mother, Helene, again and learn through a routine of good cop/bad cop that she was a drug mule for a violent Haitian drug dealer, pimp, and pornographer named Cheese.

Helene had ripped Cheese off by $130,000 when her last drug run was busted by the cops. She told Cheese the cops had taken the money, but instead hid it. Patrick goes down to the pool hall to confront Cheese and offer to exchange the stolen money for Amanda. Cheese denies kidnapping the missing girl. He simply stares into Patrick's eyes and says, "That girl, she's gone, baby, gone." In this edge of your seat thriller, everyone wants the truth … until they find it.

Article Tools