This was Ben Affleck’s directorial debut back in the day and given his celebrity status, it was quite a high profile release. Starring his own younger brother Casey Affleck, it was quite well reviewed and uses the same Boston setting that he seems most familiar with. Unfortunately while it is not a bad film, I didn’t find it to be a good one either due to how it is completely driven by its overly complicated plot that is accompanied by neither good character development nor a coherent theme.

Private investigator Patrick Kenzie and his girlfriend live in a run-down neighborhood of Boston and are familiar with all of the locals. So when a three-year-old girl Amanda is kidnapped nearby, the girl’s frantic aunt hires them to help in the search even though the police have already been fully mobilized. Tapping his contacts, Patrick learns that the mother is actually a drug mule and that together with her boyfriend she stole money from their dealer Cheese. After finding the mother’s boyfriend tortured to death and the money buried in his yard, they immediately suspect that Cheese has kidnapped Amanda as ransom for the return of his money. After alerting the police detectives handling the case, they try to negotiate with Cheese who denies knowing anything. Yet the police later tell them that Cheese has called them asking to set up a meeting at an abandoned quarry to exchange the cash for the little girl. The meeting predictably goes wrong, Cheese is shot, the girl seemingly dies in the pool and Patrick can’t help but feel that he has been deceived.

Being a veteran of the film industry, Affleck naturally gets all of the basics right. Casting is solid, performances good enough, and most of all the neighborhood feels right. He does lean too heavily on mood music to tell the audience what emotion they are supposed to feel at any given moment, always a sign of a director who lacks confidence in using acting alone to sell a scene. But what annoyed me most of is that not only is the plot too convoluted, but it is unnecessarily so. After the investigation into Amanda’s disappearance, there is a whole second story about another child who goes missing. There’s drama and action involved, but it ultimately amounts to nothing as the only real consequence out of it is that after that encounter the police detective accidentally reveals a clue about Amanda to Patrick. This actually happens more than once as the plot is advanced by Patrick having leads drop into his lap from out of the nowhere. Granted, an argument could be made that this is part of Patrick’s character development, that what he did there influenced his pivotal decision at the film’s climax. But then he makes no mention of it at all and only manages a very weak argument about doing the right thing that convinces no one. It’s infuriating how utterly pointless that whole diversion was.

I’d say that a big part of the failure lies in adapting the plot of a fictional novel with such an overwrought plot into a serious film. But then this is from the same author who wrote the Mystic River novel and that turned out to be fantastic film. Maybe this isn’t just as good a story or Affleck isn’t adroit enough to pare it down to what is needed. I will say that watching this in the post #BLM era, it’s hard to imagine anyone not considering the police as the primary suspects throughout the film. I mean it is already very shady how the detective refuse to bring in more people, and I think Affleck deserves kudos for daring to make Morgan Freeman of all people look suspicious. But even in general from here on out I think it will be almost impossible for any American films or television shows to actually show police officers in anything close to a good light. Anytime someone in a police uniform shows up or someone holds up a police badge, your mind will be conditioned to automatically think: “Those are the bad guys! Don’t trust them!”

So as I said, this isn’t as terrible as it might have been but it’s not good either. The plot moves too fast for the weighty moments to really sink in the bones of the audience and the central moral dilemma that Affleck places so much emphasis in feels weak and not really much of a dilemma at all. It’s especially grating when you realize that the conflict is so artificial as it not a hard either-or situation. There are plenty of ways for concerned outsiders to legally help a child with a neglectful mother after all. Meanwhile the police doing things like setting up ambushes to murder criminals isn’t even a consideration here. That’s some really messed up morality there.