I watched this the other night on Cable. I don't remember which of the channels it was broadcast but I hadn't seen it and I just couldn't take anything else.

It's a 2007 film notable for being Ben Affleck's first directing job and his brother and a number of excellent character actors are in it.

In case you don't know, it's about crooked cops and drug gangs based on a book by Dennis Lehane who wrote Mystic River and Shutter Island.

I thought it was relentlessly sad. That was the fashion of films and books from that period.

Seemingly, a little girl is kidnapped and held for ransom from her drug-addicted mother and live-in drug-addicted common-law husband in retaliation for their theft of $130,000 in drug money.

In a nighttime exchange, the child drowns and people die and the hero and heroine brood.

But all is not what it seems and we are in for more revelations and bad behavior and depressing outcomes.

One thing that kept distracting me is that Casey Affleck sounds and talks in the same accent as his brother.

That wierd-ed me out when I would look away from the screen.

I thought it was a damn good film. BTW, the lady who plays Dottie, a friend of the mom, was actually from the neighborhood in south Boston where Affleck filmed. She was not an actor. She is also a real life addict. But she stole every scene she was in.

I thought it was sad too, but I liked it. Personally, I think Casey Affleck is a better actor than his brother.

It's a good movie. They all do a good job acting.

But it is a downer. That's my only complaint.

Sometimes I want drama and sometimes I want to be made to feel good. Other times I want to write to whatever is noisy on the TV.

I thought Mystic River (another Lehane story) was more depressing (and creepy). A coworker and I discussed how creepy one day at the office.

The entire premise of the movie is that the little girl is "Gone, Baby. Gone." and notice the punctuation makes it two sentences. We think the killer says that while talking to the female lead when he says those two sentences. It's chilling. It's brutal. It's cold.

Then the plot twists come about and it gets eye-poppingly ugly...

I like THE TOWN better because of the way it ended and it was just as sad an ending but there was a tiny glimmer of compassion at the end.

Affleck writes these downer cop movies.

However, in terms of directing, Those of you who've seen ARGO must now realize where that taut ending came from and how he was the director to do it. GONE BABY GONE and THE TOWN are both those taut, brooding action movies when they get to the action.

And the way the fate of the little girl in GONE BABY GONE is revealed is echoed in the way he directs the Iran scenes in ARGO. I've always thought that if you turn john Goodman and Alan Arkin loose in amy movie, they are going to entertain (in ARGO, they appear in the America part of the movie and just rip apart the screen with good stuff)

One of the things that I look for in a movie is that it is entertaining, happy ending and all. I don't want to be bumbed out after it, that to me defeats the whole reason for watching a movie in the first place.

River

Gone Baby, Gone is an excellent film. I saw it a few times in the theater when it was new. Not since. I'll see it again on Netflix.