Ben Affleck gets a lot of flack nowadays from people who think he’s a pretty boy with no talent. I tend to disagree, although the roles he has been choosing lately have been pretty lacklustre (on the other hand I have yet to see Hollywoodland, but I hear it was good). But if he can’t get respect as an actor, maybe he can get respect as a filmmaker. Many people forget that he and Matt Damon won an Oscar for their screenplay for Good Will Hunting, and now Affleck is set to make his feature film directorial debut with a flick called Gone Baby Gone. The movie is based on a novel by Dennis Lehane, about the kidnapping of a little girl in Boston and the two detectives who are investigating the case. The movie stars Casey Affleck, Ed Harris, and Morgan Freeman, and I get the impression that the movie is more about the toll the case takes on the detectives than the little girl. This is certainly no art-house film, as you may expect from an actor turned director, but it does look like it is a character driven film. I’m sure the fact that the movie is set in Boston is one of the things that attracted Affleck to the project. At any rate, I’m a fan of Casey Affleck in front of the camera, so let’s see what his big brother can do behind the camera. Gone Baby Gone opens on October 19th, check out the trailer below.