Gone Baby Gone

The Boston Police patches feature a drawing of what appears to be either Fanueil Hall or the Old State House; in reality the patches feature a drawing of City Hall.

The inspection stickers on the vehicles have a "0" before the number of month of which they are inspected.

In Massachusetts, they do not.

When Patrick and Angie are driving Helene in their Buick the rear-view mirror is missing in scenes inside the car.

The mirror is in place in later scenes outside the car.

When Patrick, Angie and Helene McCready are driving in a car, they don't have their seat belts fastened.

Then for a moment Patrick has it, and then again he doesn't.

In the article "Cop Father of Slain Child Vows'Never Again,'" the byline credits the newspaper as "The Bosotn Globe.

" Patrick is in Helene's home staring at the framed Boston Herald's front page titled "Amanda Comes Home".

At first glimpse of the Herald, the Boston Red Sox logo is on the upper right portion of the paper.

Later it is seen with the Boston Bruins logo.

Patrick says "Quincy (quin-cee) quarries" - people in Boston pronounce it "Quin-zee" When Detectives Bressant and Poole are preparing to raid the house, they load a shotgun with rounds from a blue plastic box.

The rounds in the box all have indented primers which would make the ammo useless.

When Patrick and Angela meet Detectives Brassant and Poole for the first time in the diner, they are going over the rap sheet for Roberta Trent.

She had some charges in Lawrence and Lowell where the ZIP codes were listed 02114, which is the ZIP code for Boston.

Lawrence and Lowell's ZIP codes start with 01 (i.

E 01843) Patrick's teeth appear extremely yellow when he is outside talking with Angie about finding Amanda in a dumpster, but are white when he goes and meets Helene.

Det.

Bressant talks about rolling into a Columbia Point crack house in 1996 to make a bust.

Columbia Point was notorious for drugs and crime but was knocked down in 1989.

A new, largely market-rate development called Harbor Point was built over it in 1990.

During Nick's funeral service, the DVD subtitle reads "Latin being spoken".

This was a mistake in two ways.

1) The language being spoken is actually Greek.

The funeral service appears to be a Greek Orthodox service.

2) Probably the DVD technician wrongly assumed it to be a Roman Catholic service.

But even so, the Catholic church does not regularly use Latin, not since Vatican II Council in the early 1960s.

While Dottie talks to the press, she uses the word "visual" when she means "vigil.

" This was because her lines were being fed to her by director 'Ben Affleck' (qv) and she misheard this particular word.

Affleck noticed her mistake but thought it sounded natural, and thus left it alone.

At the end of the film Helene states a man from Rhode Island is driving down to see her for a date.

This geographically incorrect as Dorchester is north of Rhode Island hence he would be driving up not down.

When Remy and Patrick are drinking rum out of a bottle, Remy screws the lid back on the bottle multiple times, but we never see or hear him remove the lid.

In Nick's funeral procession the boot in the horse's stirrup is backwards, and there is no leg in the boot.

This is done on purpose; a riderless horse or caparisoned horse is part of a state funeral.

This might still be a goof, though, because the honor is usually accorded to military commanders, ranked colonel and above, rather than police officers.

The badges the Massachusetts State troopers wear are the generic badges with interchangeable city seals that are issued to the police departments of Massachusetts towns.

When Det Poole is shot outside of the crack house, the window from which he is shot is located to his right.

When he is shot, he clutches his hand to the left side of his neck.

There are no visible wounds to the right side of his neck, where they should be.

Bressant says he and his partner went to a "crack den" in the Columbia Point (Housing Project) in 1995.

In reality, by 1995, Columbia Point had for roughly 5 years, been rehabbed as "Harbor Point", a high-end mixed-income development.

The kind of crack den that Bressant says he broke into had pretty much been closed down.

When a police officer compliments Patrick on the way he handle the events at the quarry, the officer says ".

The other night.

", but it's been previously established that this scene is occurring two months after Amanda's disappearance.

First of all Ben Affleck definitely deserves a congratulation and a pat on the back for this movie. I don't remember having ever seen a movie that went by so quickly.

Really a shame that Ben Afleck diluted the books characters, and plot with a poor screenplay and miscasting of the main characters.When I read the Denis Lehane book I fell in love with the characters Patrick and Angie.

Ben Affleck's film career has been, as they say, "chequered", meaning that his resume consists of a lot of total dogs and a small handful of nice appearances here and there. Up until very lately, I had always been inclined to agree with the British film critic David Thomson, who wrote in 2004 that Affleck was "lucky to have got away with it so far".

It is now largely forgotten that Ben Affleck's big break was not as an actor in but as a writer of "Good Will Hunting". His career has never lived up to the promise of his performance in that film (a quiet and subtle display) and has been overshadowed by the success of his friend and co-Oscar-winner, Matt Damon.

I was really optimistic about Ben Affleck creating a legacy in Movies as a writer/director. Dogma, which is one of my fave pics, was such a masterpiece at the time it was released.

What a truly great mystery. Gone Baby Gone has all the elements any good mystery story should have - misdirection, crazy twists and turns, and bloodshed (just to add to the excitement).

I hate Ben Affleck like poison, hated every role he's done - and I've seen Dogma and Chasing Amy. So it was with more than a little trepidation that I slapped this DVD into my drive wondering if I've wasted my money.

When I first put this movie on I was very skeptical with it being Ben Affleck's directorial debut, but it surprised me in a good way. It was very authentic in terms of the setting of the movie and the storyline, had a very real feel to it.

...overall this one missed the mark.