Amazing Amy

Rating: 7/10 (23 October 2014)

A film of two halves. The first half is a quite gripping police procedural narrative with frequent flashbacks, all of which turn out to be untrue . (Shades of Hitchcock's "Stage Fright", although that only had a single lying flashback. ) The second half - still highly watchable - is not as convincing, with a succession of unlikely events, characters and coincidences. The film becomes less and less plausible and by the time it finishes, belief is completely suspended. It's well acted by all concerned, although the two leads are hampered by minimal characterisation. Ben Affleck is handsome but naive and fairly dumb. Rosamund Pike is attractive but homicidally devious - a near relative of the Sharon Stone character in "Fatal Attraction", perhaps, though she favours a boxcutter over an ice pick...
The film's publicity has made much play of the source novel's great length, pointing out that some 300 pages had to be cut. The missing pages presumably would resolve some of the implausibilities - Amy's ability to gain access to both her husband's office and her sister-in- law's woodshed in order to plant incriminating clues without either of them noticing, for example. A mini TV series might have been more satisfactory for the audience and done the book more justice.