They are initially met with skepticism by Police Captain Jack Doyle(Morgan Freeman), who dismisses them as too youthful to know what they're up against. Yet after a brief discourse on the family's legal right to hire outside investigative help, Doyle reluctantly agrees to have them on board, and places veteran detectives Remy Bressant(Ed Harris, real-life husband of Amy Madigan) and Nick Poole(John Ashton) as their liaisons for the duration. It turns out Doyle's own daughter was abducted and murdered years ago, and so without telling the duo as much, he'll obviously take whatever help he can get to ensure another child never suffers the same fate.

     It doesn't matter whether you're married or single, with chil-dren or without; when a child abduction makes the news, the fear that something abominable is about to happen to a young innocent touches everyone's heart, and here in Gone Baby Gone it's no different. Stone-cold thugs that Patrick has associ-ated with in the past offer their help in giving leads on little Amanda's whereabouts. Amanda's mother Helene is a low-rent trash coke-whore; while having her child taken from her doesn't help her see the light exactly, it helps her come to certain terms with her reality. This might all seem a little bit Hollywoodish, but it's not. In Ben Affleck's capable hands(yes, I know--I still can't believe I just wrote that), every performer in the film achieves a measure of depth in their roles, allowing their characters to be fully fleshed out, even if they don't have much screen time. Every moment is one fraught with tension against a ticking clock. There are several twists and turns within the plot which might seem unbelievable in almost any other film, but they work here! Not one second, not one character, not one line of dialogue in this film is throwaway.

     Later in the film, when a second child is kidnapped(by a diff-erent person than the one who took Amanda) and is tracked down by Patrick and the two detectives, a gruesome discovery is made. When Patrick has the assailant on his knees on the floor, a dark, visceral part of you will cry out for justice to be done. It's a natural reaction, and Patrick's as well flows organically from the core of the moment.

     It's hard to continue to write this review for several reasons, primarily that there are those twists and turns I mentioned earli-er...which are so important to the rest of the story that I risk giv-ing them away by elaborating further on what happens next. Suffice to say that Ed Harris as Remy Bressant gives his best, most earnest performance in recent memory. Morgan Freeman is as perfect in this film as he's ever been, and the relationship between Casey Affleck's Patrick and Monaghan's Angie is com-pletely believable...as are the changes which occur to said relationship because of the missing child case.

     And now a word in brief on Amy Ryan, who plays coke-whore Helene. Having also just recently seen Dan In Real Life, I was amazed to realize this was the same Amy Ryan who plays sister-in-law to Steve Carell's Dan! Her appearance and demeanor are polar opposite to the trashy mom in Gone Baby Gone. This is praise not just for her makeup artists, but for Ryan's abilities as well. Although she's been in such fare as War of the Worlds and the defunct tv series Hack, something tells me the best is yet to come from her. She's one to watch.

     Gone Baby Gone is a surprisingly powerful film, moreso because it was done by a first-time scripter and a freshman dir-ector who remains--as an actor--in the shadow of his more ably talented best friend. Although the casting of Ben's own brother might strike of nepotism, I choose to believe it was simply a mat-ter of the best actor being chosen for the role. And simply put, no one could have pulled off the role of fledgling detective quite like him. The film itself is provacative, the ending well done and one which will leave an audience with something to think and talk about...something which, sad to say, most movies don't do nowadays.

     I'm still waiting for American Gangster...but unless and until that film proves otherwise, I will proudly declare that the best movie of the year has already arrived.