For Ben Affleck, the good news to be taken from his directorial debut Gone Baby Gone is that he clearly has a bright future behind the camera.

The bad news, if there exists any sibling rivalry at all in the Affleck household, is that his brother Casey has served notice that he is by far the better actor.

This is by way of saying that the child-abduction thriller Gone Baby Gone, directed by Ben and starring Casey, is the filmic equivalent of a home-run the first time up at the plate. Taken from a book by Mystic River author Dennis Lehane -- and set, like Mystic River, in the working-class Dorchester district of Boston amid themes of child abuse -- it is a serious piece of cinema from a Hollywood studio, one that takes a surprising moral stand from an unexpected angle in a world of fake moral righteousness.

It's wrapped around a performance by Casey Affleck that quietly paints the hardening of a young man's backbone in almost imperceptible brushstrokes of facial expression.

It is almost entirely his movie, though there are solid performances all around -- including a thousand-volt Ed Harris as the sort of veteran cop whose A-to-B approach to crime holds little regard for the subtleties of procedure (the kind lionized by law-and-order types but which often bears sinister baggage), and almost unknown stage actress Amy Ryan as the cocaine-addicted mother of a missing child, a tailor-made figure of media pathos whose part in her own plight is complicated and slow to unravel.

Gone Baby Gone was actually the fourth book by Lehane to feature the romantically involved private detectives Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro. It is a kind of swansong by way of introduction, as Patrick and Angie take on a case that strikes to the core of their relationship. As the movie opens, the usual media horde that attends urban tragedies is assembled in front of a public housing project. There, a young, blonde toddler has been abducted after being left alone by her unemployed, single mother (Ryan). Left unsaid is that the victim is white, which scores extra points in the sensationalism chart for media coverage of urban crimes.

Frustrated by the slowness of the police investigation, the child's grandparents (Amy Madigan and Titus Welliver) approach Angie and Patrick to investigate, hoping their familiarity with "the 'hood" could be key to breaking the case. This is much to the chagrin of the key police investigators, old school cops Remy and Poole (Harris and John Ashton), and the almost-sainted police chief (Morgan Freeman).

And it's here, in the depiction of the seedier side of his beloved Boston, that Ben Affleck's direction works best. The place seems real, from the bars to the accents to the attitude (many speaking parts went to local non-actors).

Gone Baby Gone has its red herrings, and riveting subplots that trail off, but its last-act focus is laser clear. Casey Affleck's baby face seems to grow and mature in front of our eyes as he faces a crisis of conscience worthy of a good loud post-movie debate. That, to me, is the essence of a smart movie, and Gone Baby Gone is one of the smartest of the year.

(This film is rated 14-A)
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