http://www.culturesnob.com/2008/05/gone_baby_gone#comments en Copyright 2008 Tue, 06 May 2008 20:53:33 -0600 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/?v=4.12 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss http://www.culturesnob.com/2008/05/gone_baby_gone#c18417 http://www.culturesnob.com/2008/05/gone_baby_gone#c18417 Tue, 06 May 2008 20:53:33 -0600 Roughly halfway into Gone Baby Gone, Ben Affleck's directorial debut, the movie is finished. The plot involving a kidnapped youth has been apparently, tragically resolved.

But the movie still has an hour left, a clockwatcher will tell you. And even if you're not a person regularly calculating how the anticipated remaining X plot will unfold in the remaining Y minutes, you know that there's plenty left to come. So what will it be? What will this movie be about, having dispensed with what appeared to be its primary story?

One of the great joys of cinema is a movie that genuinely surprises you — not with a twist ending but by being something different from what you expected or (even better) different from what you've previously experienced. (Surprise endings are so obligatory in thrillers nowadays that the only real surprise is their absence.)

So I was seriously jazzed about Gone Baby Gone at its midpoint, wondering where it would take me and excited that it seemed to be a nearly honest drama about missing children. It might actually substantively explore grief, responsibility, repercussion, community, and healing.

It didn't take long for it to disappoint me, for it to choose the false path I should have expected. ]]>Read the full article

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