Wiggly Socks Movie Reviews

By Linda Winsh-Bolard

Based on the Dennis Lehane novel.

In Dorchester area of Boston four-year girl disappears. Police are not making much progress in the case, and the girl’s aunt Beatrice (Amy Madigan) decides to hire private detectives to find Amanda.

The detectives are actually a couple, in business and love, Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan). They have little experience in children kidnapping cases and Angela is not even comfortable with the ramifications of the case. They are no hard-nosed PI, they don’t carry guns, they don’t take on deadly cases, they do small matters.

What they do have, is experience in living in a tough drug, alcohol, unemployment and abuse ridden neighborhood and the advantage among the people living there for not being cops- the natural enemies. The policeman in charge, Capt. Jack Doyle (Morgan Freeman), reluctantly agrees to let Patrick and Angie to ride along with the cops, Remy Bressant (Ed Harris) and Nick Poole (John Ashton). Together they learn that a large sum of money, property of a local drug dealer, disappeared just before Amanda vanished.

Patrick and Angela get sucked into territory of drug dealers, kidnapped babies, crucification murder, and naturally, deceits and betrayal.

When they do find Amanda, they face an unexpected moral dilemma, and, having made a choice, they have to live with the consequences.

This is directorial debut of Ben Affleck who also took part, with Aaron Stockard, in scripting the novel. Casey Affleck play Patrick Kenzie.

The film apparently should play as a moral ambiguity between what is morally right and what is considered right by law.

Into certain degree is does, as it presents the cops and their point of view at the end, after you have watched Amanda’s Mom (Amy Ryan), an alcoholic and drug addict who would sell her soul for getting high, and the complicated relationship within the family and neighborhood that, should Amanda return, will affect her for life.

As the PIs descend into the swamp of these dilemmas they discover clues that they, and the audience, have seen, that were always there, but nobody realized their importance. That seem life like and new.

But during the whole time there is whinny Casey Affleck as the tough guy going for what’s right. He was whinny in Assassination of Jesse James but there I thought that there it served his part. But a whinny PI? Making hard choices? Living with another competent, if not overly sympathetic PI? All his life making living detecting in tough neighborhood? Hands up or I´ll whine? It stretched my ability to believe. It also put a serious dent into the ambiguity of a good detective sliding down the moral pole, or for that matter climbing up to it, when he watches good people do wrong things for all the good reasons.

Lehane’s novel (this is his forth with the same team) describes Boston as the forever stratified society defined not by achievements but by birth, address, class and ethnicity. The snobbery of the rich carries down to the poorest. This is nicely captured in the picture and becomes nearly the best part of the film. It also has some very good acting, both Amys, Ryan and Madigan, are quite in their characters, Morgan is, as nearly always, good and Ed Harris does not disappoint. The plot is seriously naïve and reminds one of watered down Chandler, particularly in the second half.




A Miramax Films release and presentation of a Ladd Co. production. Produced by Alan Ladd Jr., Dan Rissner, Sean Bailey. Executive producer, David Crockett. Co-producer, Chay Carter.
Directed by Ben Affleck. Screenplay, Affleck, Aaron Stockard, based on the novel by Dennis Lehane, Camera: John Toll.

Patrick Kenzie - Casey Affleck
Angie Gennaro - Michelle Monaghan
Jack Doyle - Morgan Freeman
Remy Bressant - Ed Harris
Nick Poole - John Ashton
Helene McCready - Amy Ryan
Bea McCready - Amy Madigan
Lionel McCready - Titus Welliver
Devin - Michael Kenneth Williams
Cheese - Edi Gathegi