Director: David Fincher
Cast: Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, Carrie Coon, Neil Patrick Harris, Tyler Perry
Running Time: 149 minutes
Certificate: 18
Synopsis: When Nick’s wife is apparently kidnapped from their home, he becomes the focus of a media circus. But is he completely innocent of her mysterious disappearance?
Seven years after GONE BABY GONE and it still feels like Ben Affleck is riding the wave of a monumental hero’s return – even without the cowl. Now, making good on the promise of his early career (well, GOOD WILL HUNTING at least), Affleck has emerged from a near-decade of piss-weak cinema as one of the heavyweights. How fitting then, that an actor who’s done sterling work in changing the audience’s perception of him should lead the adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s GONE GIRL, a film that beneath the layers is essentially about perception – and, perhaps more importantly, how it’s manipulated.
Things are never entirely what they seem. As troubled husband Nick Dunne, Affleck sums up GONE GIRL perfectly – ambiguous, untrustworthy, and distant. When his wife Amy goes missing he’s put under the media’s microscope of merciless scrutiny, and with each revelation he flips between hero and villain. It’s a smart trick that challenges protagonist empathy (and to think, most of us have only just got used to liking Ben Affleck again).
The other characters are subject to the same dynamic – for the audience, their integrity is shaped by the script’s clever (though occasionally predictable) rug-pulls; for onlookers in the story, by the cartoonish (but frighteningly accurate) news coverage of Amy’s disappearance from the reactionary press. Proof perhaps that you shouldn’t trust everything you see on screen…
Of course, David Fincher needs no such Affleck-style heroic return. Since SEVEN he’s barely faltered and save the odd bit of showing off he’s a grounded and structured filmmaker – perfect foil for this adaptation, which in the wrong hands might have been a tawdry and contrived affair.
GONE GIRL still lags behind the best of Fincher’s recent films though, lacking the relentless atmosphere of ZODIAC, simmering darkness of THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, or superior character work of THE SOCIAL NETWORK – all things that occasionally feel lacking in this particular story.
There are other nagging problems: Rosamund Pike’s Amy is more two-dimensional than the script would have us believe; flashbacks to the blissful early days of Nick and Amy’s relationship are clunky, better suited to some fast-talking, annoyingly precocious 500 DAYS OF SUMMER knock-off; and as the plot unravels, some developments prove inspired, while others feel like the lesser choice of multiple paths. To begin, it’s gripping stuff, steeped in intrigue, but curiously, as the story continues it becomes less so, victim to the old notion that some mysteries are best left unexplained.
Fortunately, GONE GIRL is a film that’s more concerned with creating a complex web of themes than its own plot. And despite a waspish, almost surreal sense of humour, it’s a pretty cold business, too – detached and strangely emotionless. A perfect fit though. The point, almost.
Perception’s a funny old business. Though things are not entirely what they seem, GONE GIRL is exactly as you imagined: a bestselling thriller in the hands of David Fincher, with Ben Affleck V.02 up front. Something that’s more than worth searching out.
[usr=4]GONE GIRL is in UK cinemas October 2.
