The movie is all about child abduction in Boston area. Having lived here for almost 3 years now - I can relate to the place and hence connect to such movies better. Ben Afflec has directed this movie and Casey Affleck plays married private detective helping investigate a little girl's kidnapping case. The mother of the missing girl is a drug addicted careless b****ch.
During the process of helping solve the case, Patrick Kenzie - the private detective promises the sloppy mother that he will find the child. As it appears the child kidnapping was a set up and a high ranking police officer (Morgan Freeman) was involved in it. The high ranking police officer did have good intentions to give the child a good life but the private detective Patrick Kenzie finds it out - informs the state police of Mass and gets the child back to her mother and the people involved in the girl's rescue (from unwise drug addicted mother) went to jail.
I don't know why all the movies shot around Boston area are kinda ending on a sad note - I remember The Departed also ending in a shoot out leaving Leonardo DiCaprio (Billy Costigan) dead...
What I quite didn't get is why Patrick Patrick Kenzie could not keep shut about the truth about the staged kidnapping of the girl.
- The child was happy with new foster parents - so to call them.
- He knew his wife - his fellow detective (Michelle Monaghan) would leave him for doing this...
- He got two senior detectives killed during the investigation
- And finally he virtually killed the soul of the girl by sending her back to her mother..
- Was it his ego or that he wanted to take a revenge for a high ranking police officer just fooled him brilliantly
- Or was it that the promise he made was more important than the ones' lives which revolved around lil girl?
- Or was it the fact that he couldn't handle the truth
The movie is so well made - I couldn't refrain from getting myself involved into it completely. The obvious lesson I couldn't miss was "there are some promises better not kept."