In 1979, a 7-year-old child in the United States, Itan Paz, disappeared in lower Manhattan, New York, and this case of child disappearance shocked the United States, inspired the entire society to search for missing children, promoted the passage of relevant bills, and laid the groundwork for the International Day of Missing Children on May 25 every year...
The case of Etan Paz's disappearance has been pending for years, and in 2010 the Manhattan District Attorney's Office reopened an investigation and arrested a suspect with mental illness two years later
The disappearance of children, these four words should be the nightmare of every parent, every family, but also one of the social problems that plague the world today.
▲ Chen Kexin's "anti-abduction" movie "Dear" has made many people pay attention to the problem of child abduction, and the film prototype character Sun Haiyang wrote an article "Sun Haiyang's Sad Search for a Son" after his son was abducted.
In China
There is no authoritative data on the number of missing children in China each year, and the "Baby Homecoming" website, in cooperation with the Ministry of Public Security, is China's largest public welfare platform for the search for missing minors.
In India
According to India's reported data, more than 90,000 missing children are recorded every year, equivalent to one child missing every minute;
In the United States
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, about 800,000 cases of disappearance of minors are reported in the United States every year, equivalent to 2,185 cases per day, and 2% of these missing children will no longer be reunited with their parents...
In China, traffickers abduct children primarily for adoption. The younger the child, the less memories of the child's birth parents are and the more they can fit into the abducted family, so children of the lower age are most likely to be targeted by traffickers.
In addition to children in the lower age group, the disappearance rate of children aged 13-14 is also higher than that of other age groups. Traffickers abduct these children for hard labor, begging and even forcing abducted children to participate in illegal and criminal activities.
After the disappearance of their children, families abandon their careers in order to find their children, sacrifice their families, and do not let go of every clue, but in the end it is often a void... From the moment the child disappears, it is the time when the whole family is broken.
The movie I'm going to talk about today is about a 4-year-old American girl, Amanda, who disappeared.
▲ "Missing Baby" Phoenix Satellite TV Movie Station broadcast at 23:25 on May 25
Movie quick look
"Missing Baby" is based on the novel "Goodbye Baby, Goodbye Baby" by contemporary American writer Dennis Lehan. It tells the story of Amanda, a four-year-old girl in Boston's Dolchester neighborhood, who suddenly disappears, and private investigator Patrick is commissioned to embark on an investigation to find Amanda.
Dennis's novel "Mysterious River" was nominated for an Oscar in 2003
The story takes place in the Dolchester neighborhood on the outskirts of Boston, USA, a gang-infested, drug-infested black street filled with restless air.
Amanda, a four-year-old girl, suddenly disappeared, but after calling the police, her mother Helen did not care much, and the police did not pay special attention to the case. Only amanda's uncle and aunt are impatient to turn to private detective Patrick and his lover and partner Angie.
Amanda's mother, Helen, is being interviewed about her daughter's disappearance
Patrick decided to start with a familiar neighborhood environment and slowly expand the scope of the search. During the search, he discovered that Amanda's mother was an addict who seemed to care far more about drugs than her missing daughter.
Sighing, Patrick decided to open a breakthrough from Helen and investigate along the lines of drugs. When a series of drug dealers, fraudsters and child abusers were investigated, they flatly denied any involvement in the kidnappings. Patrick is in trouble, and he has been swept into boston's darkest heartland.
Private investigator Patrick and his girlfriend and partner
The involvement of the media and the police forced the incident to be exposed to the spotlight, and in order to get the case to light as soon as possible, Patrick temporarily cooperated with Sheriff Jack and Detective Lemy.
Just when the case was at stake, the drug dealer leader reached out to the police, confessed to kidnapping Amanda, and demanded a deal with the police. On the night of the deal, Patrick and Lemy are asked to separate, Lemy pays the money, and Patrick picks up the little girl nearby.
However, an accident occurred during the transaction, the police exchanged fire with the criminals, the drug dealer was killed, and the whereabouts of the little girl were unknown. The case ended with the culprit being killed and the girl victimized.
If it's a normal suspense action movie, the movie may end here. However, the second half of the film gives the audience a peak circuit development!
After the end of Amanda's disappearance, Patrick has been obsessed with the missing little girl, and while solving another child abuse case, Patrick is out of control and kills the child abuse criminal. During another conversation with Detective Lemy, he discovers that Lemy had lied to him before.
After a series of investigations and analyses, Patrick finally discovers that Amanda is not dead, and that the real culprit who kidnapped her is her uncle, Jack, the sheriff who formed the department to deal with child abductions!
In jack's backyard, the little girl was playing carefree with her uncle. In the sun, there is a little more silence on the deep face of the old man, Amanda smiles happily, and the two are immersed in the warmth of the family, and this beautiful and pleasant picture is engraved into Patrick's eyes.
Here, it is necessary to mention morgan Freeman's acting skills. Who would have thought that the sheriff with a righteous look, a steady posture, a low voice, and a full of law enforcement majesty in the early part of the film would be a real kidnapper?
▲ Uncle Morgan - walking film quality inspection
It seems that as long as there is a film joined by Uncle Morgan, it will add a layer of humanistic care and ethical speculation.
▲ Even commercial entertainment films such as "Counterfeit Gods" are also cloaked in inspirational and educational significance because Morgan, who plays God, has put a layer of inspirational and educational significance on the essence of funny
▲ In "Million Dollar Baby", Morgan became a label actor dedicated to the Olympic Bid
The truth of Amanda's disappearance thus comes to the surface: the uncle who has suffered the loss of her daughter and loves the child is distressed that Helen did not take care of Amanda because of drug use, and after learning that Helen hacked a sum of money from the drug dealer, he thought of kidnapping Amanda to rescue the evil family and take Amanda to his family to raise.
At this point, a difficult choice lay in front of Patrick. Is it to reveal the truth and let Amanda go home to continue living with her addictive mother and obtain procedural justice; or to conceal the fact and let her uncle take good care of Amanda and retain moral justice?
Tangled, Patrick eventually chose the former.
After her uncle went to prison and Amanda returned home, Helen did not rehabilitate and stopped taking drugs. In the dimly lit room, Patrick watched as Amanda, who was alone again, accompanied only by toys, was afraid that he would continue to ask himself for the rest of his life whether the choice at the crossroads was right or wrong...
Movie reviews
Missing Baby is Ben Affleck's directorial debut, starring his younger brother Cassie Affleck, with Matt Damon as co-producer.
From left, Matt Damon, Cassie Affleck, and Ben Affleck
Prior to directing the film, director Ben Affleck starred with Matt Damon in several Hollywood films such as Mindcatcher, The Vanishing Lover, and Batman.
Although the earlier Ben gained a lot of audience popularity through this, his light was always suppressed by good friends, and his acting skills were also controversial, such as the face paralysis that was criticized by others.
Ben Affleck and Matt Damon in Mindcatcher
In addition to acting, Ben's talent in directing and screenwriting is actually more outstanding.
After the release of Missing Baby in 2007, his talent as a director gradually became known, and in 2013 he was both director and producer, winning the 70th Golden Globe Award for Best Director and the 85th Academy Award for Best Picture for Escape from Tehran.
▲ Oscar Best Picture "Escape from Tehran" Douban 8.3 points
Ben's younger brother - starring Cassie. Affleck was also recognized by professionals and audiences for his performance in Missing Baby.
▲ In 2017, Cassie won the Academy Award for Best Actor for "Manchester by the Sea"
Whether it is from the script design, rhythm control, realistic significance, or content depth, "Missing Baby" is an excellent suspense film.
Through Amanda's disappearance case, the film not only focuses on the social event of the disappearance of children, but also extends to the tragic situations that children may encounter after their disappearance, ignorant children encounter adults who are addicted to desire and lose their human love, and also expose the dark entanglements at the bottom of the city.
▲ Stills of "Missing Baby"
In the UK, the film was originally scheduled to be released in 2007, but because of its plot, it is very similar to the story of Madeleine McCann, a 4-year-old girl in the UK who disappeared in Portugal that same year. The disappearance has triggered long-standing unease among British parents and even British society as a whole about the safety of their children.
British authorities and directors believe that the film is sensitive and inappropriate for release in the UK and is therefore banned.
At the heart of Missing Baby is that it raises a moral dilemma.
Living in a family without love, should Amanda be brought back to her irresponsible mother at the end of the story? This became a myth for everyone after watching the movie.
It is both a philosophical question: is the outcome more critical, or is the process more critical? It is also a social question: is the law first, or morality first?
The sheriff's kidnapping plan is undoubtedly politically correct in terms of the result, drug dealers and child abuse criminals have been punished, and Amanda can live happily with her uncle; but from the process point of view, it is improper, it is a kidnapping and extortion full of deception.
According to the law, the sheriff's actions are criminal, and Amanda should undoubtedly be sent back to her mother; but according to moral standards, the sheriff and the police officers are willing to break the law and save the little girl from a depraved life, just to give her a healthy and happy childhood, and they have done nothing wrong.
Patrick says that if he doesn't, if Amanda, who grew up, asks, "They kidnapped me, you know better than me, but you didn't do anything," he wouldn't be able to face it and wouldn't be able to forgive himself.
There are too many such inconclusive questions in life, simply because the world is not black and white, good and evil, and there is always a gray area without answers between law and morality, between human emotions and the bottom line of principles that they adhere to.
Patrick stuck to the principle of punishing criminals with the law in his heart: he once said that if he faced the child abuser again, he would never raise his gun; he insisted on calling the police to bring the old police officer Jack to justice and exercising the duty of care for Amanda's guardian mother.
And Lemmy, Jack, and even Patrick's girlfriend are all based on morality, with the rescue of the little girl's life as the first priority.
The two sides, which were not wrong in the first place, were pushed to the opposite side by the ambiguous fate. Patrick insisted on himself, but lost almost everything, and his girlfriend also condemned and left him afterwards...
When she thinks Patrick made the wrong choice, does she convict Patrick on the balance of inner law?
At the end of the film, when Jack is in prison and Patrick watches TV with Amanda, what is left for the audience is the reflection of the soul.
If one of your choices can affect someone else's life, how do you exercise that power?
We cannot judge whether the protagonist's choice is right or wrong, nor can we discern an absolute correctness from the moral dilemma. No one has the right to judge the lives of others, nor to judge the choices of others in the name of the righteousness of good and evil that he decides.
Everyone is an individual with free will, and Patrick is caught up in a decision that affects someone else's life, making a choice in place of the still young Amanda. And when Amanda grows up, the only person who can decide her fate will be herself.
Who didn't make the wrong choice a few times when they were younger? It doesn't matter whether Patrick is right or wrong, what matters is that life is always full of irreversible choices that require us to bravely move forward and face our souls bravely.
To make a choice is to bear,
When you look back, you must also be brave to face it
May 25 at 11:25 PM
Missing baby
Please pay attention
Text: Skylar
Editors: Skylar, Batam