Directing debut of Ben Affleck, who stays behind the camera and cedes the spotlight to his younger brother Casey, in the role of Patrick Kenzie, the Boston missing-persons private eye ("I find the people that started in the cracks and then fell through"), along with his "snooty" partner Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan), featured in a series of detective novels by Dennis Lehane. The plot, starting sensibly enough with the vanished daughter of a drug-addicted and derelict single mom, proves in the long run to be preposterous. But Affleck, meaning Casey more than Ben, works wonders to humanize Lehane's rather embarrassing literary creation, partly just by his youthful delicacy and his chip-on-the-shoulder defensiveness about it. A singularly unprepossessing hero, he gains stature by holding his ground, however sullenly, against some highly showy performances (Ed Harris, Amy Madigan, Amy Ryan, Morgan Freeman, among them). And the other Affleck, Ben, does some nice impressionistic detailing of his native Bean Town, and some candid thumbnailing of assorted lowlifes, before he succumbs to a muddying plot and a gagging resolution. (2007) — Duncan Shepherd
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