Issue Date: March 9, 2008
"Gone Baby Gone"
"America's Most Wanted" host John Walsh investigates a recent thriller.
The Plot
In the search for a missing child in Boston, two young private eyes (Casey Affleck and Michelle Monaghan) find the troubled mother (Amy Ryan), a cop (Ed Harris) and the chief of police (Morgan Freeman) caught in a web of secrets that makes everything and everyone suspect.
Our Insider
After being devastated by the abduction and murder of his son in 1981, John Walsh became a victims' rights activist and helped create the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. Today, he hosts TV's "America's Most Wanted."
OVERVIEW
"It's a real gutsy movie that takes a tough subject with a complicated plot and makes it into a realistic drama about a missing child. It really does a great job of dramatizing the parental anxiety of not knowing what happened. Personally, it was hard for me to watch, and I had to stop and start it over because I've lived through certain elements."
P.I. PERFORMANCE
"The two young actors who play the private investigators set the bar high for real-life P.I.s because they believe in doing the right thing. As dark as the movie got in some places, they were the rudder and the moral compass guiding the action, even when the good characters went off track."
COPS AND MAMAS
"Morgan Freeman handled his role with incredible dignity, acknowledging the reality of how evil things are out there. His argument about foster care [vs. letting a child stay with a bad parent] at the end of the film was passionate and right-on. Amy Ryan took on a very unflattering role as the misguided, selfish mother. She gives you the creeps, and you hate her -- meaning the actress did a phenomenal job."
TWISTS AND TURNS
"The script was incredibly challenging, and just when you think it's about to do one thing, it does another. People might get the impression it's about dirty cops who are trying to rip off a drug dealer in some scenes. But then it takes some turns with pretty interesting plot twists that spin it in another direction. It takes you on the road of life, and, as I've learned, a lot of times the end of that road has no justice."
UNHAPPY ENDINGS
"What I respected most about the film was that it didn't have the typical I'm-Going-to-Disneyland conclusion that we all love. My son's case didn't have a happy ending, and a lot of real-life situations don't. The moral dilemma at the end of this film was gutsy. In the end, it was all about doing the right thing, in spite of the evil that people are often exposed to."
-- Jeffrey Ressner
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