Anyone leaving the cinema after seeing Ben Affleck's 2004 turkey Surviving Christmas could have been forgiven for thinking they'd just witnessed a 91-minute suicide note.

The geezer that once took home an Oscar for co-writing Good Will Hunting was reduced to playing an obnoxious millionaire reduced to paying a family to bring him some Yuletide joy.

That was four years ago. Now Affleck has staged a comeback of Lazarus proportions with this sublimely-conceived thriller...which is also his directorial debut.

Up there with Mystic River, another Dennis Lehane story, Affleck's adaptation scores thanks to its pitch-perfect casting, razor-sharp dialogue and serpentine narrative.

When four-year-old Amanda McCready goes missing from her working-class neighbourhood the police draw a blank so the family call in private eyes Kenzie (Affleck) and Angie (Monaghan).

Lovers as well as gumshoes, they know the area, its rundown saloons and its drug dealers, and their detective work immediately sends the investigation off on a grim, unforeseen tangent.

It turns out that Amanda's sluttish dopehead of a mother (Amy Ryan - excellent) wasn't at a neighbour's watching Wife Swap when her daughter disappeared. She was snorting heroin in a toilet cubicle with a seedy dealer.

Hooking up with Ed Harris's hard-bitten detective, Angie and Kenzie embark on a journey that takes them into the labyrinthine world of Boston drug dealers and child-abusers.

Adapting a Lehane novel, you've already won half the battle...yet Affleck raises the bar with a story that snakes back and forth, darting in unexpected directions and is confident enough to throw up a final, terrifying moral conundrum.

Casey Affleck delivers another tour de force after Jesse James as the fresh-faced 'tec while Amy Ryan fully deserves her Oscar nomination as the needy mother and slatternly crackhead.

The harrowing theme of missing children is expertly handled - the inarticulate desperation of Amanda's aunt (Amy Madigan) pitched against the paternal pragmatism of Morgan Freeman's cop, whose own child was a victim.

(The movie's release in the UK was postponed due to the furore surrounding the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, who bears a chilling resemblance to Madeline O'Brien as Amanda.)

A healthy suspension of disbelief may be required during the third act yet Affleck keeps the tension simmering to the movie's audaciously stunning climax.

Jennifer who?

Tim Evans