All 6 Ben Affleck-Directed Movies, Ranked (Including Animals)

Ben Affleck walks in the footsteps of Clint Eastwood, Robert Redford, and George Clooney as a Hollywood leading man who made himself into a steady hand behind the camera. Affleck, whose acting reputation was in the dumps in the 2000s after a string of bad movies, really needed to reinvent himself. When his debut "Gone Baby Gone" premiered to acclaim in 2007, he reminded the world that, yes, the guy who starred in "Pearl Harbor" and "Gigli" is also the guy who co-wrote "Good Will Hunting."

Affleck's sixth and latest film, "Animals," has arrived on Netflix 19 years after "Gone Baby Gone." In those almost two decades, Affleck's directing career has seen some of the same ups and downs that have defined his work as an actor. He's mostly stuck to making crime thrillers but has explored different niches within that genre, from private detective story to heist movie to period piece epic.

Looking at the six feature films that Affleck has directed (sadly, his never-made Batman movie isn't one of them), what are the best and worst of the bunch?

Coming in last is the film that broke Ben Affleck's winning streak as a director. "Live by Night," adapted from the second novel in the "Coughlin" trilogy by author Dennis Lehane, has ambitions to be "The Godfather" and falls far short of them.

Set during Prohibition, Affleck plays Joe Coughlin, a Boston bank robber. The rebellious son of a police captain (Brendan Gleeson), Joe lives dangerously even when not driving getaway cars; he's sleeping with Emma Gould (Sienna Miller), girlfriend of local mob boss Albert White (Robert Glenister). After being discovered, Emma's apparent death, and a short time in prison, Joe relocates to Florida where he builds a rum-running empire.

"Live By Night" is an immensely frustrating movie: the kind that feels like it should work because of all the great pieces it has, but just doesn't. Affleck, in his 40s during production, miscasts himself as an angry young man trying to get ahead. The final cut runs just over two hours, but it shows the seams and scattered pacing that suggest at least another hour got left on the cutting room floor. Considering the movie spans about a decade of Joe's life, that crammed runtime never sustains the breadth that "Live By Night" should have.

But there's one saving grace: "Live by Night is a great-looking movie, shot by master cinematographer Robert Richardson (a go-to DP for Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorsese). Richardson makes the most of the movie's Florida setting, convincing you the sunbelt is indeed the "heaven" that Joe calls it. "Live by Night" was greeted as a disappointment upon release back in 2016, but I'd say it's worth one watch just to soak up the pretty pictures — and maybe turn down the volume whenever Affleck-as-Joe's somnambulant narration comes in.

Yes, sadly, Ben Affleck's latest film is one of his weaker efforts too. "Animals" is a political thriller with some ... suspicious similarities to Akira Kurosawa's procedural masterpiece, "High and Low." Affleck plays Mark Kimball, a rich lawyer running for mayor of Los Angeles as an independent. Right before the election, his son is kidnapped with a $7 million ransom attached — money that Kimball just sunk into his campaign.

"Animals" is Affleck's shortest feature film at only 106 minutes. Whether that's a mercy or just the movie being wisely economic with its pressure cooker premise, I'll let you decide. Set in the world of politics, "Animals" has big and timely ideas on its mind about social class and the sacrifices needed to win in politics. The conclusions it finds, much like the film's script, are rather trite. 

Gillian Anderson co-stars as Dayle, an ice-cold fixer who sticks out like a cartoon character, almost screaming out for a much more lurid film than this prestige-aspirant one. The movie comes most alive in scenes shared by Affleck and Kerry Washington, who plays Mark's wife, Abigail. As Mark learns on the worst possible night, Abigail has been having an affair. Affleck (who is divorced from both Jennifer Garner and Jennifer Lopez) told USA Today that his personal life helped him understand the "gravity" of a relationship falling apart.

"Animals" turned off some viewers before they'd even seen it thanks to Affleck saying publicly how he used generative AI for "lots of things" when making it. The movie itself isn't good enough to overlook that sin, either. As /Film's Chris Evangelista wrote in his review, "Animals" feels like a Netflix movie in all the bad ways.

Now we get to the good stuff. Affleck's lightest film and the closest to a straight-up comedy, "Air" is about how Nike signed an endorsement deal with Michael Jordan in 1984, shortly before he became the most famous basketball player in history. 

Ben Affleck's BFF Matt Damon stars as Sonny Vaccaro, the Nike exec who played the biggest part in securing the deal. Affleck himself plays Nike co-founder Phil Knight. Jordan, who was not officially involved in the production, appears without his face ever being shown to the camera, practically elevating him to sainthood.

"Air" was the first film produced by Affleck and Damon's production company, Artists Equity. True to its name, the company allows cast and crew to share in a film's profits "as if they were investors," per Affleck. "Air" reads like a mission statement: Jordan, the talent side of the deal, secured an equal share of the pie for himself.

"Air" is a crowdpleaser and crackerjack entertainment, carried by its star-ladden cast as they walk through the Nike offices. But it stretches the definition of "underdog story" beyond belief by using Nike, a company that even in 1984 had revenue close to $1 billion, as said underdog.

The tell is when Vaccaro and Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman) discuss Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A." and how when you really listen, you realize it's a sad song about a hopeless Vietnam War veteran. "Air" ends with a victory lap montage informing us how everyone involved in this deal went from rich to richer, set to... "Born in the U.S.A.", because "Air" is hoping you won't look too deeply beneath the feel-good melody to notice the story it's telling you. And if you do, that needle drop tells you the movie is in on the joke.

Affleck's greatest laurels as a filmmaker came when his third film, "Argo," won Best Picture at the 85th Academy Awards.

A period piece set in the late '70s/early '80s, "Argo" is about the Iranian hostage crisis, when, during the 1979 Iranian revolution, most of the staff at the U.S. embassy were taken hostage. Six managed to escape, and "Argo" is about how the CIA managed to smuggle them out of the country. How? By disguising them as a Canadian film crew doing location scouting for a science fiction film titled, you guessed it, "Argo."

Affleck stars as CIA agent Tony Mendez, who took point on the extraction. Hiding himself behind a shaggy haircut and beard, Affleck humbly lets his supporting cast — mostly the hilarious John Goodman and Alan Arkin — steal the show. Goodman plays John Chambers, the frontier-pushing makeup artist who designed the makeup for "Planet of the Apes,' while Arkin plays composite character Lester Siegel, a fictional film producer. No matter how many times both Chambers or Siegel say "Argo f*ck yourself," you'll never get tired of hearing it.

The rescue of the embassy staff by way of "Argo" is the sort of wild true story that demands to be told as a movie. That said, "Argo" bends the truth in several places, like downplaying the Canadian government's role in the operation. Unsurprisingly, that has drawn criticism, but Affleck defended Chris Terrio's fact-twisting script in a 2012 interview, noting that reality doesn't have the three-act structure a Hollywood thriller script needs.

I don't think any Hollywood actor is more synonymous with Boston than Ben Affleck. (Though he was born in Berkeley, California, Affleck was raised in Massachusetts.) For his second feature, and his first time starring in a self-directed movie, Affleck stayed close to home. 

"The Town," adapted from Chuck Hogan's novel "Prince of Thieves," follows a professional bank-robbing crew operating out of Charleston, a working-class Boston neighborhood which (the film tells us) is reputed for producing violent criminals. Affleck plays Doug MacRay, the leader of the crew, who falls for Claire Keesey (Rebecca Hall), who just so happens to be the manager of the bank he and his guys last robbed, where they took Claire hostage. Their romance is a ticking time bomb; you spend the film dreading the moment Claire finds out Doug is one of the guys who held an assault rifle to her head. When it comes, Affleck and especially Hall act their hearts out.

"The Town" boasts an especially strong ensemble cast, from Jon Hamm as the FBI agent hunting Doug's crew to Jeremy Renner as Jem Coughlin, Doug's hot-headed right hand. Watch "The Town" back-to-back with "The Hurt Locker" and you'll walk away understanding why Hollywood briefly thought Renner was the next big thing. The ensemble of "The Town" cemented that Affleck was an actor's director, which anyone who saw "Gone Baby Gone" could've guessed. But it also showed he can shoot a mean action sequence, like a car chase through the streets of Charleston while the guys — fresh off a robbery — are dressed like nuns.

Where "The Town" loses some points is an ending that chickens out on consequences, but an extended cut features an alternate ending where Doug gets his due.

Ben Affleck's most successful, mature, and thoughtful film remains his first, "Gone Baby Gone," adapted from the novel of the same name by Dennis Lehane. The film streamlines the novel, but it inherits its strong moral questions. Like "Animals," Affleck's debut was a crime thriller centered on a child's kidnapping.

The only one of Affleck's directed movies he doesn't act in, "Gone Baby Gone" instead stars his brother Casey Affleck as Patrick Kenzie, a Boston private investigator partnered with his girlfriend Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan). Kenzie and Gennaro are hired to investigate the disappearance of four-year-old girl Amanda McCready (Madeline O'Brien). They stumble into the discovery that — spoilers for this almost 20-year-old movie — Amanda was kidnapped only to get her away from her horribly neglectful mother, Helene (Amy Ryan), and into a safer home.

Spilling the truth in that situation is a dilemma that genuinely has no easy answer. "Gone Baby Gone" is brave enough to end with a suggestion that Patrick made the wrong choice. "Gone Baby Gone" has all the grit of "The Town," with none of the tonal compromises. 

Like his later films, Affleck stacks his cast with talent down to the smaller supporting players, such as Ed Harris as seemingly noble Detective Remy Bressant, or Morgan Freeman as Police Captain Jack Doyle. The standout, as far as the Academy was concerned, was Amy Ryan as Helene, who received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. It's the highest achievement of her career, just as "Gone Baby Gone" remains Affleck's as a director.