Gone Baby Gone

On the whole, the plot was perhaps too fanciful for me to entirely suspend disbelief.  But the symbolism was deep, wide and dead on!  Gone Baby Gone is simply one of the best chronicles to date of America's current predicaments: War, Greed, Poverty and Class.

My wife and I had a HUGE argument regarding the basic moral dilemma over baby Amanda McCready's fictional future.  Like the film's protagonist, Patrick Kenzie, I too was compelled to defend a life lived as closely as possible to "the rules" of Church and of State over the alternative, where "the end justifies the means".

In short, my argument was that: Each time any of us willingly places a thumb on the scale of justice, to bend or break the basic code (evolving, egalitarian, democratic rule of law) establishing the moral framework, however flawed, for our complex society in a world of competing motives, then we are all damned.

When President Bush chose to invade Iraq because America needs oil or because Saddam Hussein was evil;  when banks risked collapsing our financial system, lending trillions to borrowers unable to repay, because the transaction fees were lucrative;  when radicals bomb clinics because abortion is murder in their eyes -- then we are all damned.

In other words, just where should my choice to "play God" begin or end?  With this riveting film noir, director Ben Affleck contends that no matter where it begins, it always ends badly!