‘Gone Baby Gone’
‘Gone Baby Gone’ isn’t always a smooth ride, but it’s a challenging, adult thriller guaranteed to foster fierce debate on the way home. Lehane’s story features the boyfriend and girlfriend private eye team of Patrick Kenzie and Angie Genarro.

Their coupling isn’t unique– after all, Dashiell Hammett wrote about the married detectives Nick and Nora Charles more than 70 years ago– but it’s still unusual enough to bring a few new angles to the well-thumbed P.I. genre.

This is one of those cases bigger than the sleuth who solves it. Like Lehane’s ‘Mystic River,’ it involves the abuse and abduction of a child (before he became a full-time writer, Lehane worked as a counselor with abused children). Four-year-old Amanda McCready is missing, presumed snatched from her bed while her mother was visiting a friend next door.

Probably the smartest thing Affleck did was surround himself with talent: cinematographer John Toll shot ‘The Thin Red Line’ and ‘Braveheart’; editor William Goldenberg cut his teeth on Michael Mann’s movies.

He’s also capitalized on his local knowledge. Clint Eastwood and Martin Scorsese worked hard to bring Boston to life in ‘Mystic River’ and ‘The Departed’ respectively, but ‘Gone Baby Gone’ feels more intimately grounded in the dirty streets and bars, and the aggressive pride that comes with them.

The movie tugs hard on that authenticity because Lehane’s elaborate plotting works better on the page than on screen, where its cleverness inevitably feels a bit suspect. And while it’s easy to sympathize with Affleck’s impulse to slot Morgan Freeman into the gravitas-heavy role of a police department official, it’s his only serious misjudgment.

The casting puts the spotlight in the wrong place at the wrong time. Where Affleck sees only a great actor, the audience recognizes a star and wonders what he’s doing there. (Fortunately, the use of Ed Harris– playing a police detective– doesn’t detract at all.)

Affleck has cast his younger brother Casey as Kenzie (above left). Casey isn’t a star– not yet anyway.
No question about Ben Affleck, though. ‘Gone Baby Gone’ is a terrific film.
4 out of 5

‘Mongol’
While it can certainly be argued that Sergei Bodrov’s ‘Mongol’ has been the victim of a misleading ad campaign that portrays the film as something slightly other than what it is, there is certainly no denying that this is one massive, impressive piece of work– an epic in every sense.

Bodrov’s film aims to take us through the life of a legend– the emperor Genghis Khan, from the age of nine until the battle that would cement his position in history. But while the trailers and clips released thus far have portrayed the picture as revolving around the Khan’s military conquests, Bodrov is actually not particularly interested in these matters.

Though a number of battle sequences are included, ‘Mongol’ is not much interested in how the great man rose to power, in the battles and tactics, but rather in how he became strong enough to do so.

The film opens with a key few days in the life of Temudgin, a nine year old boy who would eventually grow to become the great Genghis Khan. Riding to take a bride from a rival clan in hopes of establishing peace, Temudgin instead is smitten by Borte, a young girl from a friendly, much less powerful tribe, and tricks his father into allowing him to choose her instead thus guaranteeing continuing strife rather than peace.

On their return home, Temudgin’s father, the local clan chief, is poisoned by yet another rival clan and his father’s own lieutenants turn on the young boy and his family, stealing their flocks and goods and forcing them to flee for their lives.

And so Temudgin’s young life is spent on the run, always on the move, always afraid for his own life. He is all alone, with no allies whatsoever until he meets Jamukha, the son of another tribe clan, who will become his blood brother and eventual rival.

‘Mongol’ is an oddly lyrical sort of film, one that moves episodically through the life of the great Khan showing moments that at first may seem inconsequential but are later understood to be key in his understanding of the world.

The film skips through time on a regular basis, title cards letting the audience know where and when we now are, which would normally be very disruptive to the narrative flow of the picture were Bodrov not so assured in what he wanted his audience to see and why.

Production values are dazzling, as is the cinematography which takes great advantage of the stark, natural beauty of Mongolia and Kazakhstan. Asano is very strong in the role of Genghis Khan, balancing the ferocity of his character with a sly sense of humour and a deep, deep devotion to his beloved wife. The players handling Jamukha and Borte are likewise very strong.

3 out of 5