PLOT: When Nick’s wife, Amy, mysteriously disappears, he sets about trying to find her, but when evidence mounts against him, the media and police focus turn to Nick as being the cause.
REVIEW: Gone Girl is a refreshing take on the serial killer genre director, David Fincher, is known for. This one feels more soft and less gritty than his earlier works, like Se7en and Zodiac, which isn’t to say Fincher has gone soft. The subject matter lends itself to a slower-paced more methodical approach. The drama here isn’t necessarily in what the “killer” is doing, but rather, what the killer isn’t doing.
Like most films in this genre, a variety of characters are introduced, some of whom appear so normal they’d have to be guilty, others so instantly weird, they’d have to be innocent.
The same goes for the central characters, Nick and Amy Dunne, both innocent and guilty in their own ways, both layered with flaws. We sympathize with them and we despise them at the same time.
So just what is going on here?
That seems to be Fincher’s message, two sides to every coin. In Se7en, when Somerset and Mills take a drive out to the desert with John Doe, he spends the car ride trying to convince them of the sane reasons for why he committed murder, from his perspective. There are shades of this in Gone Girl, this time, with morality being questioned amongst the characters we’re supposed to be rooting for.
Ben Affleck, as Nick, brings a controlled calm to the character, and how far he has truly come as an actor. There is a presence about Affleck now, a seasoned leading man quality. You can see what Warner Bros. may have been thinking when they cast him as Batman in the new Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
Viewers might best recognize Rosamund Pike as the icy cold Miranda Frost in Die Another Day. Her performance as Amy is not dissimilar, but Pike has certainly grown as an actress, and she delivers a multi-layered performance that keeps her on the same level as Affleck the entire film. His two sides are very different from her two sides, which makes their relationship all the more compelling.
Gone Girl isn’t the strongest nor the most controversial of Fincher’s work, but it is entertaining, takes an audience on a journey into madness in its own particular way, as only Fincher can deliver, and is thoroughly enjoyable in its originality.
GRADE: B+