By Bob Polunsky
Movie Critic

“Gone, Baby, Gone” packs a wallop. Adapted from a suspense novel by Dennis Lehane, author of “Mystic River,” it has some of the same elements of mystery and suspense.

The movie is also a field day for some of the most effective supporting players in Hollywood playing three-dimensional characters that keep you guessing. All of them are involved in a dramatic chase for a villain they don’t really know, much less understand — the person responsible for the disappearance of a 4-year-old girl in the seediest area of Boston where broken homes, not congenial family life, are the norm.

First-time director Ben Affleck makes it work with fast-moving scenes that effectively establish characters that don’t distract from the film’s primary objective: Finding out what happened to 4-year-old Amanda McCready.

One subplot deals with Amanda’s desperate aunt and uncle when they plead with private investigators to take the case. The police are on the case but not getting anywhere. The investigators (Ca-sey Affleck, Michelle Mo-naghan) are hesitant. They think drugs are involved and aren’t sure how to deal with that.

Detective Remy Bressant (Ed Harris) and police captain Jack Doyle (Morgan Freeman) are also hesitant to get deeply involved but can’t help but do it as new clues erase old clues in the puzzling case.

Ben Affleck’s brother Casey is top-billed and functions as the lead character. He’s credible and likable, but his role is a reactionary one. He doesn’t initiate action or suspense. He reacts to them and sets the stage for action from his co-stars, especially from Freeman who, as usual, dominates every scene he’s in. Freeman’s body language is eloquent, and director Ben Affleck takes advantage of it with extreme close-ups of Freeman’s face in his more emotional scenes.

“Gone, Baby, Gone” em-phasizes violence and by-the-numbers solutions, so it fits the format of most of today’s mystery and crime films. At the same time, it adds another dimension to maintain the entertainment value — the importance of a person’s conscience when trying to solve crimes. Doing the right thing used to be the deciding factor in crime movies, but violence and sensationalism took over the spotlight in recent years in order to give the audience a cheap thrill.

The thrills in “Gone, Baby, Gone” aren’t cheap; they are emotionally involving. Long, drawn-out interrogation scenes set a tone that draws the audience into the complexities of a baffling case that climaxes with a surprise ending that forces the audience to judge the characters, the justice system and the people who live in dangerous areas of big, uncaring cities.

Studio rating: R, primarily for violence

Bob says: “See it, but leave the kids at home” — HHH