KEY POINTS:
Herald rating: * * *
Ten years after Ben Affleck won an Oscar (with Matt Damon) for the precociously brilliant screenplay for Good Will Hunting, his debut as director raises expectations that are frustrated by the result.
A nihilistic, atmospheric police procedural set in his hometown, Boston, it has many inspired touches and the performances, particularly Ryan's, are outstanding.
But it is all in the service of a hugely complicated story which is too often impenetrable - both visually and dramatically. Worse, its morally ambiguous ending, though cogent enough in philosophical terms, is grim and unsatisfying.
In a film adapted, like Clint Eastwood's grand Mystic River, from a Dennis Lehane novel, Affleck casts his brother Casey in the main role of Patrick Kenzie, a PI who with his partner/lover Angie Gennaro (Monaghan) has been engaged by the extended family of a missing 4-year-old girl, Amanda. The family distrusts the child's cokehead mother, Helene (Ryan), and know that Kenzie has access to parts of the community the police can't reach.
It's as obvious to us as it is to him that those who profess to care for Amanda have agendas of their own. The cops seem equally dodgy: a police chief (Freeman, in effortless, regal command) long ago lost a child to a killer and a detective (Harris), is a man whose precisely clipped hair and beard signify someone barely keeping everything under control.
These two performances and Ryan's brilliant turn, which inverts the Kate McCann stereotype and makes Helene a plausibly profane and defiant victim, maintain our interest, but Casey Affleck's studied underplaying makes for a character irritatingly devoid of emotional affect.
And the film, shot in shadow and low light, is so remorselessly gloomy that it becomes an exercise in endurance: I'm still not sure what happened in a key scene where Amanda is supposed to be ransomed, even though it was replayed - twice. As an exercise in adaptation, it could have been much leaner.
What is striking is the film-maker's ease in and affection for the Boston setting. Whether tracking along a street or panning across a menu, he seems like a man at home. For the rest of us, it's not even that pleasant a place to visit.
Cast: Casey Affleck, Morgan Freeman, Amy Ryan, Michelle Monaghan, Ed Harris
Director: Ben Affleck
Running time: 114 mins
Rating: R16 (violence, offensive language, drug use)
Screening: Berkeley, Hoyts, Rialto, SkyCity
Verdict: An atmospheric but intensely gloomy police procedural with many inspired touches but an impenetrably complicated story and morally ambiguous ending
