 Tagline: You don't know what you've got 'til it's... Gone Girl -- directed by David Fincher and based upon the global bestseller by Gillian Flynn -- unearths the secrets at the heart of a modern marriage. On the occasion of his fifth wedding anniversary, Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) reports that his beautiful wife, Amy (Rosamund Pike), has gone missing. Under pressure from the police and a growing media frenzy, Nick's portrait of a blissful union begins to crumble. Soon his lies, deceits and strange behavior have everyone asking the same dark question: Did Nick Dunne kill his wife? Storyline: On the occasion of his fifth wedding anniversary, Nick Dunne reports that his wife, Amy, has gone missing. Under pressure from the police and a growing media frenzy, Nick's portrait of a blissful union begins to crumble. Soon his lies, deceits and strange behavior have everyone asking the same dark question: Did Nick Dunne kill his wife? Written by Twentieth Century Fox Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, January 10, 2015 -- In a former life my wife was a news anchor and once had the opportunity to chat with a local police chief during the investigation of the murder of a young wife, a killing which was ultimately pinned on the husband, a man who had apparently just kind of hung around after the crime without trying to get the heck out of Dodge. My wife indicated her incredulity at the husband's lack of planning, offering, "If I killed my husband, I'd be on the next plane to Acapulco." To which the kindly police chief responded, "And we'd be looking all the harder for you, since the spouse is always the first suspect." That kind of bizarre assumption of guilt until innocence is proven has haunted several people who have claimed through the years to be innocent in the deaths of their husbands or wives, and some like ex-Green Beret Jeffrey MacDonald have seen their cases become causes célèbres, spawning books and television movies and entering the public lexicon in sometimes unexpectedly visceral ways. There have been a number of high profile "disappearances" which ultimately ended in spouses being accused of murder, with the case of Scott Peterson of Modesto, California, being one of the more notable, one that is still etched on the minds of people who find it inconceivable that an apparently well adjusted and "normal" man could savagely kill his very pregnant wife. All of these famous (some may say infamous) cases provide a bit of contextual backstory for the intriguing Gone Girl, a film which plays upon preconceptions in an almost ruthlessly sly way. It's a bit hard to adequately discuss Gone Girl without at least hinting at some of the twists and turns both Gillian Flynn's original novel and her own adapted screenplay take, and so those not familiar with the story might want to stop right here, though I will endeavor not to provide any out and out spoilers. That said, there's little question that Flynn rather ingeniously toys with her readers, and by default her viewers, in presenting a story that is intentionally bifurcated between a supposedly objective narrative and a more subjective exploration of a wife's personal experiences courtesy of a journal she's keeping, but it's part of Gone Girl's structural scheme that everything is not exactly as it might seem at first glance. Gone Girl has tended to anger some readers, frankly mostly female, who felt Flynn's denouement was a slap in the face to years of struggle for equal rights, and even Flynn has suggested she had a moment of remorse shortly after the novel appeared, fearing she had (in her own words) "killed feminism." But putting aside any subtext like that, at least for a moment, Gone Girl is a thrillingly discursive take on an age old story, one that moves at a deliberate but inexorable pace toward a rather unsettling conclusion. There are layers of misdirection abounding in Gone Girl, and one of the film's major achievements is its reproduction of the ping ponging structure of the original novel, something that many readers probably thought would be well nigh impossible in a cinematic adaptation. The main thrust of the story involves the mysterious disappearance of Amy Elliott-Dunne (Rosamund Pike, already SAG and Golden Globe nominated for this role, and widely believed to be a shoo in for an Oscar nomination when those are announced next week). Amy and her husband Nick (Ben Affleck) had been experiencing various woes, as is slowly detailed in the film's opening act courtesy of both narrative elements as well as anecdotal vignettes culled from Amy's journal (some of which are offered as voiceovers by Amy). The economic upheaval of the past several years has wreaked havoc with the Dunnes, forcing them to leave New York for the decidedly less glamorous climes of Missouri, where Nick has family. Financial struggles are only part of the trauma afflicting the couple, for in the wake of Amy's disappearance (on the couple's fifth wedding anniversary), it's soon detailed that Nick has been engaging in an extramarital affair with a young woman named Andie Fitzgerald (Emily Ratajkowski). The detective assigned to the case is named Rhonda Boney (Kim Dickens), a straightforward type who nonetheless seems sympathetic to Nick's plight even as suspicions begin to mount that he's done Amy in for reasons that are not initially clear. Nick's own social clumsiness adds fuel to the fire, and soon he's been more or less convicted of murder before any actual charges are filed or any body has been found. Roughly the first half to two thirds of the film tends to fall into rather well worn thriller ruts, with a procedural angle added as Boney starts collecting scraps of information and what seem to be important clues as to what has happened to Amy. Director David Fincher, a master at keeping his cinematic cards about as close to his vest as is humanly possible, wends a circuitous path through little data bits that seem to be pointing in one direction, but which ultimately prove to be something else entirely. There's a provocative contrivance at the core of Gone Girl which won't be spoiled here, but which in fact may tend to delight and/or annoy in about equal measure, depending on one's tolerance for being willfully misled. A lot has been written about the "big twist" in Gone Girl, but it won't really be detailed here in any overt way to prevent spoilage (those adept at reading between the lines are again urged to skip the rest of this review if they haven't read the book or seen the film). Instead, what tends to interest me more is how the film flips back on itself after the twist, in a kind of intentionally ironic self-reflexive revisionism that plays almost like a bizarro world version of Rashômon, in that it's another version of the same story by one character whose previous version has already been told. However, despite the structural ingenuity of Flynn's work, there's no denying that the film tips over into a kind of turgid B-movie sensibility at this point, with an increasingly contrived series of events that may play like gangbusters but which tend to divorce the film from its generally realistic tone in the early going. Fincher guides the proceedings in his typically adroit if somewhat aloof manner, never getting so close to the proceedings that Nick's increasing isolation becomes too unbearable to watch. A large and at times rather colorful supporting cast fills in some of the nooks and crannies of the film, with Missi Pyle doing great work as a Nancy Grace-esque harridan and (I swear this is not a sign of me having completely lost my marbles) Tyler Perry doing extremely good work as the aggressive attorney Nick hires to help get him through the gauntlet of press scrutiny and ultimate arrest. For all the ingenious artifice of Gone Girl, at its core the story is actually fairly tawdry and ultimately probably disturbing more due to the realization that Nick has jumped out of the frying pan and directly into the fire (so to speak) than to any inherent peccadilloes of either of the main couple that are put on display. The film plays with the lyric to Joni Mitchell's iconic song Big Yellow Taxi, with the disc's slipcase emblazoned with a fading piece of that lyric, "You don't know what you've got 'til it's. . ." I might suggest another lyric from a musical about to make it to wide release in cineplexes, Jason Robert Brown's The Last 5 Years (perhaps especially appropriate given the fact that Amy's disappearance coincides with the couple's fifth anniversary). To quote the opening song from that show, the film's denouement may seem to offer a glimmer of hope for Nick, but it's manifestly obvious he's Still Hurting. (Note: If my wife is ever found in Acapulco at about the same time that I've mysteriously vanished, she did it.) There have been complaints that Gone Girl is too willfully contrived for its own good (in both its novel and film forms), and that the film is simply too slow to ever build up much suspense. Those might be salient criticisms, but they're counterbalanced by Fincher's unerring sense of mood and character. Things may not move very quickly in this film, but the pieces are set in place very deliberately, at least part of which can be attributed to Flynn's rather smart reimagining of her work for a new medium. While the plot may raise some hackles, what ultimately carries this film is a set of unique and finely tuned performances. Affleck manages to convey both helplessness and a kind of incipient rage as the accused, and Pike manages the precarious zigzag of Amy's arc with appealing finesse and an unexpected amount of subtlety. Technical merits are first rate, and while the supplemental package is light, the Fincher commentary is a lot of fun. Highly recommended. [CSW] -3.1- Unfortunately I highly predicted what I thought was actually going on way too early in the movie and I was right. Although I didn't see the rip off coming probably because it did seem to be a little bit of an ad hoc plot device. This was a very long movie that had an unsatisfactory ending. The acting was really good and the movie had a good cast. It was a little violent and absurd at times and some viewers may actually like the ending. If you are willing to invest 2 and 1/2 hours of your time to get there; then go for it! For me the movie though entertaining was way too long! [Show Spoiler] Cast Notes: Ben Affleck (Nick Dunne), Rosamund Pike (Amy Dunne), Neil Patrick Harris (Desi Collings), Tyler Perry (Tanner Bolt), Carrie Coon (Margo Dunne), Kim Dickens (Detective Rhonda Boney), Patrick Fugit (Officer James Gilpin), David Clennon (Rand Elliott), Lisa Banes (Marybeth Elliott), Missi Pyle (Ellen Abbott), Emily Ratajkowski (Andie Fitzgerald), Casey Wilson (Noelle Hawthorne), Lola Kirke (Greta), Boyd Holbrook (Jeff), Sela Ward (Sharon Schieber). IMDb Rating (02/15/15): 8.2/10 from 314,804 users Top 250: #133 IMDb Rating (02/01/15): 8.3/10 from 289,661 users Top 250: #128 IMDb Rating (01/06/15): 8.3/10 from 232,994 users Top 250: #120
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