Affleck back to form with noirish tale of abduction
Gone Baby Gone Cert 16
Sunday June 08 2008
Gone Baby Gone
Cert 16
YOU would think that nothing could salvage Ben Affleck's career at this point. "Gigli", J.Lo and rehab seemed to come together to earn him a reputation as little more than a brainless alpha hunk, a male Paris Hilton. And yet with Gone Baby Gone, Affleck goes back to where he started, behind the camera in Boston, with surprisingly good results.
When a child is abducted on the streets of that city a local private investigator (younger brother Casey Affleck) in enlisted by the child's aunt to privately investigate the case. The child's mother has been drawn into the media frenzy surrounding the abduction and the local cops resent the involvement of the investigator. We later learn that one of them (Ed Harris) has an emotional involvement in the case.
It's a film that examines the media hysteria and prurience that happens when children are abducted -- especially pertinent themes in our post-Madeleine post-Austrian crazies times. The examination of the mother's past, the rush to judge and the resentfulness of the whole investigation seems spookily familiar.
More than this though it's a slickly noirish whodunit and while the plot swerves and pivots more often than The Departed, it's still worth going along for the ride. I found my knuckles whitening around the arm of the cinema chair as events progressed. Ben Affleck gets great performances from his cast, mixing unknown non-actors in smaller roles with established stars in the lead parts. This is territory that won him an Academy Award what seems like several lifetimes ago and even if this doesn't garner quite the same plaudits it still qualifies as a new beginning after the past few years.
Superhero Movie
Cert 15A
THERE is something tiresome about films that exist purely to satirise other films. At best it's Scary Movie or Airplane, at worst it's Epic Movie. After a while, with these kinds of films you realise that the only point of interest is identifying which scene in which film is being referenced with not so hilarious results.
Superhero Movie is the latest of these dire cinematic parasites, a silly Spider-Man spoof that isn't even as funny as the source material sometimes was. Other films referenced include The Fantastic Four, X-Men and Superman, but none of them come close to raising a laugh.
The cloacal and scatological gags arrive thick and fast, but if you are old enough to read any of the comics they draw on, you probably won't find them especially funny.
As always with these films, there's an in-built DVD extras bit, showing us the gags that were deleted. It boggles the mind that the people who made this watched what they already had and thought it would make it even better if they included the jokes that didn't make the first cut.
Normally with these films there is faint justification that they will at least make a ton of money. But I truly can't imagine many people deciding to spend money on this. Maybe it'll be the film that finally spells the end of this whole genre. Here's hoping.
Craig Mazin and Leslie Nielsen are involved but you can't think for what reason, unless it's to underline the fact that they don't make 'em like they used to.
- Donal Lynch
