"Gone Baby Gone"

Not sure how or why this worked out, but this past weekend, as Katie and I were picking movies, we ended up with back-to-back nights of movies involving parents who, for lack of a better way of currently describing it, really fit the job description poorly.

So there's your first spoiler of sorts for "Gone Baby Gone": the lead female is utterly unfit to be a parent. And that's what makes Amy Ryan's performance so stunning in this movie. Her character arc from junkie mother pissed off at the world trying to justify her every action to concerned mother fearful for the safety of her child to the very end bring to mind a very callous disregard for the general welfare of the life she helped to bring into the world. I know actors are paid to do what they do, but that cannot have been an easy role to play.

This movie is much more than your run-of-the-mill kidnapping and investigation drama. One may think they've figured this out 2-3 times before it actually becomes clear what happened (ok, I did get part of it almost immediately, but that was more of a wild guess than anything). There are plenty of twists and turns in this to keep fans of the genre happy.

But the real meat of the story is the constant moral ambiguity and crises of conscience that Casey Affleck's character is forced to face. The story itself, while fairly gripping, really isn't the story. The moral mindgames that are in play throughout are what really drive this movie forward. This may be a crime drama, but it's not about good vs. bad. It's more about doing what's good vs. doing what's right, and sometimes, the lines just aren't quite that clear.

I like movies that make me think. Even ones that take me to a school of thought that I'm not entirely comfortable with, and this one definitely fits that bill. Definitely a well-written and well-acted movie, though Southies will more than likely disagree.

Oh, and in case anybody was wondering what the other Unfit Parent movie of the weekend was, it was "Nanny Diaries."