Gone Baby Gone (2007)

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General		Extras
Category	Thriller	Main Menu Audio & Animation Audio Commentary-Ben Affleck and Aaron Stockard Featurette-Going Home: Behind the Scenes with Ben Affleck Featurette-Capturing Authenticity: Casting Gone Baby Gone Deleted Scenes
Rating
Year Of Production	2007
Running Time	109:19
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (65:56)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Ben Affleck
Studio Distributor	Walt Disney Studios Home Ent.	Starring	Casey Affleck Michelle Monaghan Morgan Freeman Ed Harris John Ashton Amy Ryan Amy Madigan
Case	?
RPI	?	Music	Harry Gregson-Williams

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) Polish Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Russian Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Hungarian Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Czech Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) English Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.85:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English English for the Hearing Impaired Polish Hungarian Russian Greek Slovak Latvian Lithuanian Romanian Estonian Ukranian	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    A young girl has been kidnapped, whilst her single mother was briefly visiting friends. Private detectives Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) and Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan), who are a couple as well as business partners, are hired by the child's aunt to help find her. Though it is very different from their usual job of tracking runaways and cheating partners, the pair believe that they can add to the investigation as they have a rapport with parts of town that don't take kindly to police. With the cautious agreement of local police commissioner Jack Doyle (Morgan Freeman), the pair join the search.

    Seasoned detectives Bressant (Ed Harris) and Poole (John Ashton) are leading the police investigation. The pair are initially not too happy with the interference of outside investigators, but their minds are changed somewhat when Kenzie and Gennaro unearth evidence that shows the young girl's mother has something to hide and that local drug dealers and paedophiles may be involved.

    Gone Baby Gone is a thickly plotted thriller, played by detailed characters, that wades through all manner of grey areas of morality. The film itself is based on a novel by Dennis Lehane, whose book Mystic River was very successfully adapted a few years back. Gone Baby Gone works in a very similar style to Mystic River, but is a more engaging and immediately relatable story. There are probably few out there who can imagine the true grief of losing a child, but even fewer who can question it. By subtly following this sort of questioning, neatly woven into the guise of a gripping thriller, Gone Baby Gone will strike a primal nerve in many viewers.

    The film itself is the first directoral effort from Ben Affleck, which is a blessing and a curse in terms of selling the film. As a high-profile actor with a wildly variable body of work in both style and quality. For ever Hollywoodland (a frequently overlooked masterpiece) there are one or two Gigli's and Phantoms', and all manner in-between. Up until now there has been little to suggest any talent behind the camera save for his Oscar winning writing credit to Good Will Hunting. Thankfully, Affleck really seems to have known what he is doing. The direction is outstanding, let alone for a first time director, and the film's pacing excellent. The film itself is, in many ways, Ben Affleck's love letter to his home town of Boston and this has undoubtedly helped him to capture an authentic atmosphere to the whole film. There is not a character in the is not fleshed out to a plausible, well rounded human being, yet the film touches on all walks of life within the city.

    Gone Baby Gone is an excellent film on every level. Let's hope it encourages Ben Affleck to stay behind the camera rather than in front of it.

Video

    The film is presented in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio and is 16x9 enhanced.

    The film has a deliberate gritty look about it that features a distinctive moderate level of film grain. The image is reasonably sharp and features no low level noise. The transfer suffers from crushed blacks and somewhat limited shadow detail, particularly one night time scene set inside an unlit house in the middle of the night that runs from the 61 to 64 minute mark. The video is far from unwatchable, but occasionally it looks overly murky and lacks definition.

    The film features a fairly subdued colour palette by modern standards, which suits the film well. The colours appear to be well balanced ad fairly natural throughout.

    There is no sign of compression related artefacts in the video. There are no signs of any film artefacts in the transfer.

    Plain English subtitles as well as English for the hearing impaired subtitles are present for the feature. Based on the portion I sampled, they appear to be accurate to the spoken word and well-timed.

    This is a RSDL disc. The layer break occurs at 65:56 but was not noticeable on my equipment.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
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Film-To-Video Artefacts
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Overall

Audio

    An English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448 Kbps) audio track and Polish, Russian, Czech and Hungarian Dolby Digital 2.0 (192 Kbps) audio tracks are present for the film.

    The dialogue is clearly audible throughout the film and easy to understand, despite a few heavy Boston accents. There are no problems with audio/visual synchronisation.

    The film features an effective orchestral score by Harry Gregson-Williams, though it is nothing you will remember out of context to the film.

    The surrounds are put to good use for environmental effects and create an immersive surround field throughout the film. The subwoofer is used fairly sparingly, though effectively when it is called for.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Going Home: Behind the Scenes with Ben Affleck Featurette (7:10)

    "Ben Affleck is from Boston, let's sell that" must have been the thought running through the minds of producers when they thought of this unnecessary featurette. The featurette sells Ben Affleck as much as it does the film in this featurette, which is mildly interesting viewing but seems a lot like the filmmakers are just reaching around to pat them selves on the back.

Capturing Authenticity: Casting Gone Baby Gone Featurette (9:01)

    Authentic Bostonians. There's nothing quite like them. I'll leave it up to you to decide whether that's a good or a bad thing. As a Boston lad, Affleck was determined to capture the real look and feel of the people of Boston in the main cast and extras. This casting feature certainly drums that in and heaps praise on the cast for their love of being like Boston. Mildly interesting, but that's about it.

Deleted Scenes (17:09)

    Half a dozen deleted scenes with optional commentary from director Ben Affleck and screenwriter Aaron Stockard. The most notable being an extended ending that runs for more than 7 minutes and an extended ending that runs around three minutes. Each deleted scene is placed in context with where it was taken from the film. The commentary is honest and quite interesting.

Audio commentary by director Ben Affleck and screenwriter Aaron Stockard

    An surprisingly interesting commentary track. Affleck leads for most of the time and he has a lot to say about the experience of being behind the camera rather than in front of it. Whilst the pair get a little technical at times, it is all presented in lay terms, which is somewhat refreshing.

    The Region 1 and Region 4 editions are identical save for a couple of trailers for other movies and PAL/NTSC formatting and language tracks. The Region 4 edition features Polish, Russian, Czech and Hungarian 2.0 tracks in place of Spanish and French tracks that are found on the Region 1 edition.

    An gripping, multi-layered thriller that will spark debate among viewers for the grey morals it unearths.

    The video suffers from crushed blacks and limited shadow detail, but is otherwise quite good. The audio is very good. The extras are reasonable in number and generally worthwhile.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall