No I wasn’t gone from this blog, and neither did I break up with my girl. Rather, I spent this weekend leisurely, and obviously that made my girl happier than ever. That’s why I didn’t update this blog for so many days.

I’ve watched two movies in the weekend (which seems to be my routine now), Rule #1 and Gone Baby Gone. The former is a piece of shit - literally. Stinks, useless and basically pointless, and deserves to be flushed down the toilet but keeps boobing back up the surface. Avoid it. Like a plague.

Now Gone Baby Gone however, is much different. In fact, a world apart. First off, this movie is directed by Ben Affleck, star of various blockbusters like Good Will Hunting, Pearl Harbour, Armageddon and Daredevil. Never knew he had a knack for directing though, and I have been proven dead wrong that pretty faces can’t do anything but act, sing and model - I’ll be damned that this is one of the very few movies in this century that stirred my lethargic mind into a frenzy during AND after the show.

You see, this movie strikes a chord with most parents nowadays, now that we have Sharlinie on the hunt. Sure, you can say that she’s a political tool, that many others had been lost but never reached the papers, but that wasn’t the point I’m trying to make.

Losing a child is a nightmare for all parents, even coke-addicted ones. And in this movie, drug and alcohol abuse becomes the central motivation for the child’s disappearance. But first, a short synopsis.

Gone Baby Gone is about a little girl, Amanda McCready going missing, and how a self-righteous bunch of guys (and girl) go after her in the crime-infested alleys of somewhere that kind of reminds me of how the media portrays the ghettos. The premise is simple - girl gone missing one day, media pounces on mother and creates a sensational story complete with crying mom and vengeful aunt, uncle and aunt hires protagonist Patrick Kenzie and his girlfriend Angie Gennaro to track down the girl, the police comes in and tells the duo to look away but lets them do their investigation anyway, and along the way they discover a conspiracy.

The pacing of the movie is beautiful. Never a scene wasted, it feels as if every gesture, every line and word the characters speak are to be absorbed, digested and analyzed to get the whole meaning of the story. And this is one story that deviates from the lovable American formula of black-and-white good-guy-vs-bad-guys and bad-guys-loses-in-the-end. No, instead, it lays down a huge patch of grey, and the ending will have you asking yourself whether did Patrick Kenzie had done the right thing and did those that were involved in the case did the right thing either.

Casey Affleck isn’t really cut out to play the part of Patrick Kenzie, with his good-boy looks which lacked an edge his character needed. He looks too clean to be a part of the ghetto crowd, and his naivety in handling the case seems unfitting to his street-smarts. But other than this strange contradiction, the rest of the characters are memorable.

Sgt. Remy Bressant played by Ed Harris is particularly engaging, especially during the conversation between him and Patrick after they raid the house where Patrick killed a child rapist. He literally shone in that scene.

The rest of characters handled themselves well, especially in the last scene where the moral choice becomes shades of grey. I had a lump on my throat as Angie begged Patrick to turn a blind eye for the good of the child, and deep inside myself I found myself begging him too. I too felt the utter dejection when the police eventually arrived, and then it struck me - I have been hoping for scripts that shows two goods clashing into each other, provoking the audience to think if good is truly good when both alternatives have their own moral high ground but are mutually exclusive. Justice and humanity - did Amanda really wanted to go home? Was it right to make decisions for her for the sake of her own good? Will she turn around like Patrick said and put the blame on him? Is Patrick selfish or does he really know what he is doing?

I believe that the debates will go on for a long time after the credits roll, but that is the beauty of this movie - the shades of grey that is so beautifully melted into a cooking pot of unknown actors and actress all converging together to sell the script, not the big names.

Now that I’ve done praising the movie, it is time I voice some dissatisfactions. This movie is labelled as an 18PL movie, meaning it contains elements of sex, violence and politics/race/religion. And to watch this movie, you have to be above 18. Now does it make FUCKING SENSE that the censorship board go crazy with cutting out all the scenes that contain words like fuck, suck, asshole, bitch and so forth? The conversation between Patrick and Cheese is totally incomprehensible thanks to the terrible cuts, reducing their ghetto-talk into some angelical vatican prayer sermon! I mean COME ON, if people above 18 is allowed to watch the movie, then might as well leave those curses intact! It’s not like we’re too young to be making decisions for ourselves right? And if we’re above 18, chances are we already know what fuck means and we use it just as much everyday, so why the anal cuts? And yeah, why didn’t “cunt” get cut but “fuck” did?

The movie is marred by terrible censorship and this is one of the few movies that I have to resort to reading the subtitles to understand what they are talking about, which had never happened when I’m watching English movies! Talk about the humiliation. The excellent dialogues are truly ripped apart by the bone heads up in the Malaysian Censorship Board. Those MCB (Machouhai Cibai) people really spoiled this movie for me.

FUCK YOU!

And congratulations to Ben Affleck for bringing us this wonderful movie. I really did have a great time that night, and to you my friends I highly recommend this movie - in uncut DVD version.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 24th, 2008 at 10:49 am and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.