Afflecks' Gone Baby a Real Coup

Ben Affleck “emerges triumphant” from his directorial debut, Rolling Stone says in reviewing Gone Baby Gone, out today and already a critics' darling. “It's one of the best crime movies of this decade,” the Hollywood Reporter raves. Younger brother Casey stars as a PI searching for a missing girl in a story brimming with “genuine moral complexity,” the Village Voice says.

Ben Affleck “gets richly detailed work from an outstanding cast,” Rolling Stone says. The Times heaps particular praise on Amy Ryan, whose “gutsy, sensational” performance as the girl’s crackhead mother “pushes our sympathies to breaking point.” The Seattle Post-Intelligencer calls the story, based on a Dennis Lehane novel, “patently implausible,” but the New York Post calls its conclusion “a real talker.” (More movie review stories.)