Tagline: Everyone wants the truth… Until they find it.
Private investigator Patrick Kenzie and his partner / girlfriend Angie Gennaro witness a televised plea by a woman named Helene McCready for the return of her missing daughter Amanda, who was abducted with her favorite doll “Mirabelle”. Patrick and Angie are then hired by the child’s aunt Beatrice to find Amanda and discover that Helene and her boyfriend “Skinny Ray” had recently stolen money from Cheese, a local Haitian drug lord.
After Ray is murdered, Patrick and Angie join the police detectives investigating the case, Remy Bressant and Nick Poole, to arrange a trade of the money for Amanda. Captain Jack Doyle reads Patrick a telephone transcript of the drug lord setting up an exchange for Amanda. The exchange at a nearby quarry in Quincy is botched and Amanda is believed to have drowned, as her doll is found in the quarry and returned to Helene. Doyle, whose own daughter was killed years before, takes responsibility for the death and goes into early retirement.
Two months later, a seven-year-old boy is abducted in Everett and Patrick receives information that the boy was taken by a known child molester. After entering his house and finding evidence of the abducted boy, Patrick returns with Remy and Nick to rescue him. They are seen by the residents and Nick is shot. Patrick enters the house during the shootout and finds one of the residents dead. He retreats into the child molester’s room, where he finds the boy’s dead body; he then shoots the child molester in the back of the head in a fit of rage.
Nick later dies of his wounds. Trying to alleviate Patrick’s guilt over the events at the house, Remy unthinkingly confides that he once planted evidence on someone with the help of “Skinny Ray” — whom he had initially told Patrick he didn’t know. After Nick’s funeral, Patrick speaks to a police officer, who tells him that Remy had been asking about the drug lord’s stolen money before the drug lord knew it was missing.
Patrick then questions Beatrice’s husband Lionel in a bar and pieces together that Lionel and Remy had conspired to stage a fake kidnapping in order to take the drug money for themselves and to save Amanda from her mother’s neglectful parenting. At that point, Remy (trying to cover for his earlier mistake) enters the bar, while wearing a latex mask and holding a shotgun, and stages a robbery. He points the shotgun at Lionel’s head, but the bartender shoots Remy twice in the back. Remy flees and is pursued by Patrick to the rooftop of a nearby building, where he dies.
Patrick is questioned by the police about Remy’s death and learns that the police never had a phone transcript like the one that Doyle had read to him prior to the botched exchange. Patrick and Angie drive to Doyle’s home, where Patrick finds Amanda living happily with Doyle and his wife; Doyle was part of the phony kidnapping all along. Patrick threatens to call the authorities, but Doyle attempts to convince him that Amanda is better off living with them than with her mother. Patrick leaves and discusses the choices with Angie, who says she will leave him if he calls the police, since she believes that Amanda is much better off with the Doyles. In the next scene, the police arrive, Doyle is arrested, Amanda is returned to her mother amidst heavy publicity, and Patrick and Angie break up.
Patrick later visits Amanda as Helene is about to leave on a date with someone she met during the publicity over her daughter’s disappearance. Helene informs Patrick that Beatrice has been forbidden to visit and is upset about her husband’s arrest. Helene has no babysitter for Amanda and when asked, she tells Patrick that Dottie (Helene’s friend) will watch her, even though she has yet to ask Dottie herself. Patrick volunteers to watch Amanda, who is holding her old doll and watching television. Patrick asks Amanda about Mirabelle, only to hear Amanda inform him that her doll’s name is “Annabelle” — implying that Helene did not even know the name of her daughter’s favorite toy.
“Gone, Baby, Gone,” Academy Award-winner Ben Affleck’s directorial debut, stars Casey Affleck (“Ocean’s Eleven”), Michelle Monaghan (“Mission: Impossible III”), Academy Award-winner Morgan Freeman and Academy Award-nominee Ed Harris.
Based on the novel by Dennis Lehane (“Mystic River”) and adapted for the screen by Affleck and Aaron Stockard, the film tells the story of two private investigators hunting for an abducted 4-year-old girl in the seamiest side of Boston’s underworld.
Production notes provided by Miramax Films.
Gone Baby Gone
Starring: Casey Affleck, Michelle Monaghan, Morgan Freeman, Ed Harris, Amy Ryan, Amy Madigan, Titus Welliver
Directed by: Ben Affleck
Screenplay by: Ben Affleck, Aaron Stockard
Release Date: October 19, 2007
MPAA Rating: R for violence, drug content and pervasive language.
Studio: Miramax Films
Box Office Totals
Domestic: $20,300,218 (58.6%)
Foreign: $14,319,481 (41.4%)
Total: $34,619,699 (Worldwide)