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Like a cat on its ninth and final life, Ben Affleck may possibly have saved his career in the improbable role of director.
In Hollywood's cutthroat world, talents are not generally allowed to blow it more than once, but Affleck has somehow been given chance after chance. Here he appears at last to have a success on his hands with this watchable, surefooted, if melodramatic cop procedural about child abduction, starring his brother Casey.
It is based on a thriller by Dennis Lehane, and, like Clint Eastwood's Mystic River (also adapted from a Lehane story), it is set in the blue-collar macho world of south Boston.
The movie arrives just as the Madeleine McCann story appears finally to be in abeyance, though the missing four-year-old girl in this story has a heartwrenching similarity - or perhaps it is simply, and just as heartwrenchingly, that all four-year-old girls look alike. Casey Affleck and Michelle Monaghan play Patrick and Angie, live-in lovers who are also a private investigation team. Just as news about a missing girl is plastered all over the TV, the kid's strait-laced aunt and uncle show up at their apartment, begging them to take the case and use their community credibility to get information that locals won't give the cops.
Through a strange mixture of impulsive generosity and hubris, Patrick agrees, and the pair have an uneasy chat with the girl's unreliable mother, Helene (Amy Harris), a cocaine addict; their presence infuriates Captain Jack Doyle (Morgan Freeman) and Detective Remy Bressant (Ed Harris), who, under intense media pressure, have something to prove.
Mercurial, hot-headed Patrick - who, in certain situations, isn't afraid to pull the gun he's got shoved into his waistband - fatefully decides he has the key contact to unlock the case: a high-school buddy who is a notorious cocaine dealer, and whom he believes will speed him to the centre of the mystery. Awful secrets are disclosed and Patrick gets out of his depth.
Unlikely as it may seem, there are some cutely judged black-comic moments. Patrick and Angie's inappropriate Hardy Boys presence at crime scenes and interrogations never fails to inspire a look of droll, tight-lipped scorn from Bressant.
The flaw in the film is Michelle Monaghan, who once again gives a faintly kid-sisterish performance.
But Casey Affleck coolly holds the centre of the film: a wiry, stubborn presence, intent on solving the case but aggressive and unstable with it. As for the ending, it is pure fantasy, and could be condemned as essentially mendacious. But this is well-crafted pulp, and the director contrives a neatly judged final shot before the credits: two people watching daytime TV, left alone with their lack of illusions.
