Kevin's Watch

Watched Gone Baby Gone last night and it was pretty impressive. Very good cinematography and music-powerhouse performances from Michelle Monaghan and Ed Harris, Casey Affleck was effective and Morgan Freeman good as being Morgan Freeman. Once again we're in South Boston and it does have a Mystic River/The Departed feel to it. Of course the man from South Boston, Casey's brother Ben, did an admirable job of helping to write, produce and direct. The script may have gone a bit too far trying to outdo itself with twists...but all and all an enjoyable movie. It's its own movie but follows a formula that we've seen many times before.

Long, slow, well acted, unique take on detective work with couple together, great payoff with moralistic question: **1/2 out of **** for me.

Good movie. Casey Affleck wasn't the best choice for the part, but he pulled it off. Have the feeling it was written for Matt Damon, but I guess it pays to be the director's brother. Good moral dilemma, and I applaud the direction they took.

I finally got around to watching this, and loved it.

The real treat, of course, is the moral ambiguity.

Now, most morality plays that touch on the question, "Do the ends justify the means?" really don't do the question justice. Instead, they cheat us out of a real discussion of the issue, and use a twist or deus ex machina to say that "Good cannot be accomplished with evil means."

But that's ignoring the potential of the dilemma, in my opinion. After all, if you knew that a course of action would lead to unsatisfactory results, of COURSE you would not choose that course of action.

But this movie really looks at the issue in a more honest way. It is undeniable that the perpetrator (whom you can't really call an antagonist) is doing something unethical. It is also undeniable that certain characters lives are much better off because of it. So the question becomes, not one of doing the right thing and making the world better, but of doing the right thing (and worsening peoples' lives), or doing the wrong thing (and helping people out).

It's not an easy question, and I'm impressed that Affleck had the guts to tackle it.

Ok-ish film for me, primarily because of the static staging of the actors.

I actually happened to be in a test audience for this flick. I've never seen the fully released one, and I'd be curious because the version I had didn't have all the credits (like who the director was) and there were several things that still seemed pretty rough, like not all the music in place probably.

I don't know if they trimmed it down or not, but it needed it in the version I saw. It wasn't naturally a subject of movies I tend to watch, and I was kind of bored and annoyed. After the movie, they took the people with smiles on their faces and had them stay behind. I wasn't one of these. I filled out my questionaire by basically playing armchair critic and made several recommendations, especially as to cutting certain scenes that didn't really lend much that seemed to be the result of an adaptation. Who knows...maybe I was listened to and helped made the movie tighter. But they wouldn't tell who the director was, but they said he would be coming into the theater and would I please finish up outside. I did, and found out later that if I had looked positive about the movie, I would have shared breathing space with Ben Affleck.
But hey ho...it seems most people liked this and it got some award noms, which I found surprising after the version I saw. I should probably see the movie and see how it turned out.