I thought I’d had enough of gritty South Boston crime dramas after going to Providence College with a kid who told me stories about ‘Southie’ like it was some kind of bizarro moral universe where right was wrong, cats were dogs and you were either Irish or you weren’t. Then I saw Mystic River a few years ago, and felt for a week like I needed to take a shower. 2006’s The Departed was a great movie with great acting and a terrific soundtrack, and since my friend in LA recommended it, I tried Gone Baby Gone.
So if you haven’t seen it, and you want to, stop reading. I’m about to give what they call a spoiler–where I tell you what happens in the movie, and it spoils the surprise. I know this might seem like an unneeded explanation but I deal with a church crowd that doesn’t get out much. The ethical drama of the movie revolves around the choice of whether to send a child back to an unfit mother or allow her to stay with people who will take care of her. Granted these people kidnapped her, but by all accounts they seem like good people who want to give this girl a life, which is more than her coked-up mom would do. It’s complicated by the girlfriend who tells Patrick, “if you do this (call the cops and send the girl back to her mother), I will hate you forever, and I don’t want to do that”. Patrick (played wonderfully by Casey Affleck) makes the only decision his moral code allows him to make.
