David Fincher is one of my favorite Directors and every one of his movies is an event. Even though it took me a while to see it I finally got around to seeing Gone Girl in the theatre. At 2 and half hours I thought it might be a long movie but it keeps you enthralled and the twists and turns keep you guessing. It doesn’t have that dark moody feel that Seven and Fight Club had but it is a dark psychological thriller.
It’s hard to explain Gone Girl without talking spoilers since there are many twists so the synopsis is going to be brief. The movie is about married couple Nick (Ben Affleck) and Amy (Rosamund Pike) Dunne. Their marriage is falling apart and on their 5th wedding anniversary Amy goes missing. The daughter of famous writers her disappearance gets national attention. The detective Rhonda Boney (Kim Dickens) feels like something isn’t quite right and Nick becomes the prime suspect. Despite Nick’s firm denials the media attention turns on him and he ends up hiring Tanner Bolt (Tyler Perry) a high profile lawyer from New York. Was Amy Kidnapped? Is she dead? Who did it? These are the questions that come up and it takes some strange turns to get those answers.
Like I said at 2 and half hours this could have been one boring movie. But the story really keeps you guessing. There are so many surprising things that happen you are constantly saying “wow”. The screenplay was written by Gillian Flynn based on her book. While I haven’t read the book it seems that it is mostly faithful to the story. But for her first screenplay she knocked it out of the park. It is well written and with mostly believable characters that kept you guessing. In the hands of David Fincher the movie is masterfully directed. Getting one of the best performances out of Ben Affleck I have seen in a while. And he took Tyler Perry and Neil Patrick Harris two people known more for their comedies and gave them dark characters to play. I wasn’t sure how much we would see of Rosamund Pike since she is the girl that is gone in the movie but there are flashbacks to their early relationship and her character is probably one of the most interesting characters ever on screen. But back to Affleck. He has been in some good movies but this is by far his best role. He plays a character that we aren’t sure if we are supposed to be empathizing with or hating. And he treads that line so well.
While there is going to be lots of Oscar speculation about this movie as there should be the one thing we should be able to agree on is that the score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross is pretty amazing and will get nominated. Not sure if it will win like they did for The Social Network but this is probably one of the most original and haunting scores I have heard. At one point before I saw the movie it was streaming online and I have never heard anything that sounded like it. If the Academy wants to award originality then it will win and it perfectly set the tone for the movie and added to the suspense like any good score should do.
Overall 5/5. One of my favorite movies of the year so far. Nothing really bad I can say about it. I loved every twist and turn and just blew me away when it started getting more and more complicated. The ending will have people talking and can’t wait to find more people that have seen the movie so we can discuss it and that’s how you know it’s a great movie when you want to keep talking about it.
Almost forgot to mention that if you get queasy you might have to cover your eyes at some parts. There are some graphic scenes but not too many.
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