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Gone Baby Gone was a movie I should have seen last year.  This is how far behind I am in my movie watching and Netflix queue that I am only now watching movies I should have been seeing in preparation for the Oscars 9 months ago.  Oh well.

Gone Baby Gone is the most Catholic film I’ve seen in years.  Based on a book by the same guy who wrote Mystic River, Dennis Lehane, which was made into a movie with big names, big directors, big acting awards (some could argue that Sean Penn chewed the scenery a little in that movie but hey, it was a too-die for role).

While Gone Baby Gone has some similarities to that movie (Boston, children, mystery), it exists on a different scale entirely.  Mystic River was Shakespearean — in its story, in its acting, in its takeaways; Gone Baby Gone is not so epic which ends up suiting it just fine.  It’s an intimate movie about a neighborhood and a city made by someone who clearly loves that city (that would be Ben Affleck) and starring someone who interacts seamlessly with that city (that would be his brother Casey).

Why is it Catholic?  Because it is about sin and salvation (not in the spiritual sense as much as in the actual physical and moral sense) and the gray, gray area where those two overlap and conflict.  Can you save someone without sinning?  And if you take the moral high road, what happens to those you left behind?  How do you navigate such a world?  How indeed do you be wise as serpents and innocent as doves?

Anyhoo … it’s a good movie.   Good and gray and Catholic.