Gone Girl

It was no surprise that director David Fincher was the one tapped on the shoulder to adapt Gillian Flynn’s best-seller Gone Girl: with his big-screen version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo he proved he was the go-to guy for hit novels with strong female leads (even if his film did pretty much seem to sink the Dragon Tattoo franchise for good). And hard-edged thrillers have always been a Fincher trademark going all the way back to Seven – though here it takes a while for the edge to make itself known. On the surface the story is straightforward: Nick Elliot (Ben Affleck) is a regular, decent, upstanding guy who marries the equally perfect Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike). But back in his small town Missouri home cracks quickly begin to appear in their relationship: he’s close to his family there (including a twin sister, played by Carrie Coon) and it shines a spotlight on his working class background, while Amy, an upper-class New Yorker from a literary background, is much more isolated. It’s all downhill from there, and when she vanishes he quickly becomes the prime suspect in her (assumed) murder. What follows is a struggle for the audiences’ loyalties: who do you believe? Both sides make their case – Nick through the media in the days and weeks following her disappearance, Amy through diary entries turned into flashbacks. It’s a solid thriller from the outset, though the deeper into the mystery it goes the more engaging (and funny, surprisingly) it gets. Any more would be giving away the twists that this relies on, especially early on. Lets just say that Affleck’s befuddled expression gets a good workout here while Pike gets to do a lot more than her early scenes would suggest. Gone Girl occasionally threatens to have something more to say about marriage and male-female relationships, but given the choice between pulp thrills and making a statement, this goes for the thrills every time.