A lot better than I expected, and I can see why Casey Affleck went on to star in The Killer Inside Me. It is something like Se7en, piling things up, twisting, skirting a little too close to impossibility, stretching its poetic licence to fit a fable. The themes are assembled masterfully: cops, kidnapping, drugs and absent mothers, filmed resolutely without condescension, without an American ending. Boston never looked so good; they must have shot it at the height of summer.
This was a Michelle Monaghan-segue from Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and she is solid here, though hers is the weakest of the central characters. Ed Harris reins in his signature largeness in disarming fashion. Morgan Freeman is relatively inoffensive.
Certainly the best movie I've seen for the first time in a long time. The author of the original book, Dennis Lehane, has a sequel of sorts due out in a fortnight. Now I'm keen to see Ben Affleck's new movie The Town.