Ben Affleck stained his pearly white Good Will Hunting indie-cred with execrable abominations like Gigli, Paycheck, Pearl Harbor and Surviving Christmas. His tabloid-gasm relationship with Jennifer Lopez saw him further consigned to ubiquity, cast down amongst the twisted wreckage of Hollywood's media casualties. Fast forward a few years and Ben's clawing his way back to respectability, starting with a fine character turn in Hollywoodland and now with his first foray into directing.

Gone Baby Gone is an adaptation of crime author Dennis (Mystic River) Lehane's novel about the abduction of four-year-old Amanda McCready from one of the roughest neighbourhoods in Boston. When the investigating cops (Ed Harris, John Ashton) hit a dead end amongst the hard headed locals, the missing girl's mother (Oscar nominee Amy Ryan) hires local private investigators Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) and Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan) because they know the neighbourhood and because they're not cops. As the investigation proceeds, Kenzie and Gennaro come up against local lowlifes, the investigating cops, and Capt. Jack Doyle (Morgan Freeman), a headline-hunting crusader-cop. As Kenzie and Gennaro delve deeper into the case, the clear cut morality of the crime turns murky.

Here, as in the magnificent The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, Casey Affleck gives a tightly coiled, wholly understated and ultimately powerful performance. The supporting cast members are, across the board, superb. The bitter morality that underpins the story will inevitably draw parallels with Mystic River, but when a film is this solidly built, the comparisons scarcely diminish it. As for Ben Affleck, he's finally delivered on the promise that he showed as a young Oscar winning screenwriter because as an actor, he's a stunning filmmaker.