Gone Girl (2014): Entertaining Whodunnit

David Fincher, the director of Fight Game and The Social Network, knows how to beguile us and entertain us, he knows how to move a plot along, and he has a way with actors. All of these attributes are brought to bear on his latest: Gone Girl, starring Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike. It's one of those twist-and-turn mystery thrillers that totally engages and keeps you guessing all along the way - at least, it worked me that way.

Gone Girl is about a marriage that seems pretty perfect, except, of course, there's no such thing. It's told primarily from the perspective of the husband, Nick Dunne (Affleck) who comes home one day to find that his lovely wife, Amy (Pike), is missing. There’s a broken glass coffee table, but otherwise she's vanished without a trace. Well, almost. Actually it's Nick and Amy's wedding anniversary, and Amy has always had this little tradition of a treasure hunt, so she's left an envelope with a "clue", which leads to clue #2, and so on, but that doesn't seem to have anything to do with her disappearance; why would it? Oh, and there's some hidden forensic evidence, like a few drops of blood, but that is in the kitchen, so who knows what that could mean?

Amy is kind of famous because, when she was growing up her parents made a pretty good living with a series of children’s books about a slightly fictionalized character, whom they called "Amazing Amy" - much to their daughter's perpetual chagrin - imagine living with this super-wonderful fictionalized self, whom your parents seem to like more than the real you. But anyway, perhaps this fame will turn into a benefit, since now there's an immediate burst of media interest in the disappearance of, and consequent search for “Amazing Amy.” Mom and Dad seem quietly thrilled to be in the limelight at press conferences, cable interviews, and so forth. There are vigils attended by hundreds of townsfolk, headlines everywhere, and lots of razzmatazz. Poor Nick is dragged into this, although his heart's not really into it.

Soon, the media turns, with suspicion, on Nick. And certainly the fickle, voracious media, especially the cable news variety, is a target of this story. A time-worn target, to be sure (compare Billy Wilder’s 1951 film Ace in the Hole, on this subject). We audience members are pretty easily manipulable, after all. As the narrative develops we get to hear, via voiceover, from Amy herself. Her tale has a dark side, and paints a very different portrait of her husband than he has put forward. We learn that Nick's got a few skeletons in his closet. Other new evidence keeps turning up, all of which suggests foul play. Police detective Rhonda Boney (Kim Dickens), a seeker after truth, becomes increasingly skeptical of Nick and his protestations of innocence. Inevitably, our own sympathies shift a bit. Nick’s plight looks grimmer and grimmer. Maybe it’s time to hire a lawyer, Nick, even if you are innocent.

It would be unfair, in a story of this type, to provide any more details about plot. How this all unfolds is the main thing, after all. So I won’t do that. I do have to say that I was so thoroughly engrossed and so surprized by some of the twists and turns along the way, that I wound up going over the sequence of events I had just witnessed for some while after the lights came up. And a couple of the plot devices didn’t stand up to that scrutiny, I don’t believe it could actually have happened that way.  So knock off a few points for that.

The fact that I was so captivated by the story is a credit to the actors, to the appropriately claustrophobic cinematography of Fincher’s long-time collaborator, Jeff Cronenweth, to the tight (if occasionally less-than-credible) screenplay by Gillian Flynn (who also wrote the novel); plus the mood enhancing music by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross; and, of course, to Fincher’s deft direction.  All of the acting is superb: Affleck and Pike especially, but also the supporting cast, including  Dickens, plus Neil Patrick Harris as a pathetic/creepy former suitor of Amy; Carrie Coon as Nick's supportive sister, and Tyler Perry having fun playing the flamboyant celebrity defense attorney, Tanner Bolt, who also gets off possibly the best line of the film at the close (which I won’t spoil for you, but wait for it). 

This is not a deep movie, but a pretty well done, very entertaining one.  There are a couple of quite brief scenes of disturbing violence, so if you are faint hearted about such things you may want to close your eyes (as my companion did, successfully) or if such stuff is simply beyond the pale for you, skip it altogether.

In wide release.