Built around the case of a missing little girl, Ben Affleck’s directorial debut — based on a novel of the same name by Dennis Lehane, the author of Mystic River — delivers a topical story while avoiding pat moral judgments, weaving a labyrinthine and effectively melancholic tale of warped responsibility and justice.

Gone Baby Gone unfolds in tight-knit, working class South Boston, the sort of neighborhood where, as the opening narration informs us, “people started in the cracks and slipped from there.” Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) is a bail bondsman and private investigator who chases down stolen property and the like with his girlfriend/lesser partner Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan). When the four-year-old daughter of neighbor Helene McCready (Amy Ryan) goes missing, distraught relatives tap Patrick to augment the investigation, leaning on informants who might not be inclined to talk to the police. Patrick’s convoluted search leads him to various drug peddlers, crime bosses, pedophiles and compromised law enforcement, many of whom it seems he went to high school with. (How’s that for a small world?) Just when it seems the case has wound down, a new lead sparks up, causing Patrick and Angie to question their previous read on matters.

Some of the taut, downhill energy of the first act flags some as the movie wears on, lost to a daisy chain of reversals and upturned assumptions. But Gone Baby Gone never succumbs to outright murkiness, and its detail is absolutely spot-on. Affleck’s familiarity with and obvious affinity for the setting — with its heavy accents and piss-ahhff attitudes — enhance both the film’s novelistic richness and sense of rootedness. Special mention should go to Ryan, a twice-Tony-nominated stage actress with a slate of film roles forthcoming. She plays white-trash Helene with an unapologetic self-involvement — the unblinking victim of her own shattered childhood, who now knows no choices other than poor and self-indulgent.

If, in the end, Gone Baby Gone is just a bit over-plotted, the movie comes to the questions it raises honestly, and has the guts to present an ending that is both “right” while also alienating to at least half an audience. It also embraces an abrasive, bruised, combative quality that far too many genre pictures of its ilk attempt to avoid — all very good signs for the older Affleck’s career behind the camera. For the full review, from Reelz, click here. (Miramax, R, 114 minutes)

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