Gone, Man, Gone aka The (Joe) Wright Stuff

Rating: 6/10 (18 October 2014)

Clearly this is critic and/or personal opinion-proof. By now it's probably made its neg cost several times over. The overall impression is that there's an awful lot of 'borrowing' going on. Novelist/Screenwriter Gillian Flynn has clearly been frightened by Harlan Coben who is genetically incapable of writing a straight-ahead novel. He gives the impression that if he ends a novel and realizes it doesn't have at least eight 'twists' minimum, he bins it and starts another. Nothing particularly wrong with this. I read and enjoy Coben. Trouble is all the twists tend to merge into one large twist and in a bookstore/library I often find myself taking a Coben novel I've already read. Time will tell whether or not Flynn will turn out Gone Girls like cookie cutters. Fincher, on the other hand clearly enjoys nothing more than holding Joe Wright's coat whilst genuflecting as Wright aims yet another few thousand feed of celluloid directly at the 'Festival' circuit. Gone Girl is watchable. The performances are adequate; I don't feel short-changed BUT, a couple of days after seeing it I'm having trouble remembering it.