It’s always a fact of life that goes unsaid that making the right decisions aren’t always the decisions that are the best ones. The right decisions almost always means that someone has to suffer, and that someone has to be punished, and “Gone Baby Gone” is a wonderful exploration into morality, and good intentions that end up becoming a road into murder and bloodshed. Affleck’s crime thriller, based on the novel, is a gritty and very entertaining take on children and their unending suffering under the hands of adults and their battles. Casey Affleck gives one of the strongest performances of 2007 as a stripped down private investigator named Patrick who is brought on to find a little girl who was taken from her home. While a little cliché in its workings, “Gone Baby Gone” is never as predictable as I assumed going in to it, and that’s because the adapted material always keeps us guessing. Ben Affleck directs this tight and tense thriller with incredible restraint and an interesting sense of visual style always forcing darkness and gloom on the audience, but never to the point where he’s attempting to dazzle, and surely enough he displays enough prowess to guide the story and its characters to where he wants us to be.

Michelle Monaghan gives a stand out supporting performance as the intentional conscience and center to Patrick who seeks only to do the right thing and slowly discovers doing what’s right will inevitably ruin him. But as writers Affleck and Stockard understand is that the best heroes are the ones who crumble for their causes, and always pay for their actions in attempts to keep their promises. “Gone Baby Gone” provides difficult questions of choices and means to an end and never allows the audience to provide simple solutions, nor does it allow our heroes to come out unscathed either.

Ed Harris gives a wonderful performance as FBI Agent Remy Bressant, a man who also wants to find the child, and reveals along the way how far he’ll be willing to go to get to her. All the while Patrick watches and observes and is forced to do war with his own conscience and decide what the best course of action is. Morgan Freeman, who I feared would only play a plot device, gives a stand up job respectively, playing a captain leading the task force to find the child, and butts heads with Patrick and Remy during the case. “Gone Baby Gone” is less a crime thriller, and more about being in a difficult position to act upon your duty, and sometimes paying for being the moral equalizer.

It’s one of my favorites of 2007; “Gone Baby Gone” is a frustrating, complex, and sometimes cliché crime drama with respective excellent performances, a fascinating story, and tight direction from Ben Affleck.

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