Utteryl Boring unless a Diatribe Against Female Empowerment

Rating: 1/10 (10 October 2014)

Big spoilers in this review! From the off this movie was slow, slovenly written, tediously directed with some half decent acting. I just could not connect to the characters, which were just there to be manipulated by the writer(a theme of the film). Plot - wife disappears, apparently killed by her husband, who becomes increasingly under pressure to be arrested (media and a rent-a-mob crowd holding banners!). Suddenly big twist as wife reappears to tell her story, and the film drags itself to an unsatisfactory conclusion with the odd pot shot at the amoral media (TV actually). The plot of the first half owes itself to 40s noir with all those pictures with Barbara Stanwyck and Lana Turner in - now regularly revisited in made-for-TV movies. Then the second half turns into 'Basic Instinct' with buckets of blood, and the will she - won't she get away with it trying to drum up some vague tension. We even get a sex scene, where the wife's panties never move but she is being entered by a right schmuck. Another case of the star actress does not flash but earlier a minor actress goes topless in a fumble with the husband!
Awful rubbish and a waste of two and half hours of my life. Certainly not the intricate shredding of marriage as an institution by everyone using facades/manipulation to merely survive that the press reviews trumpet. It is unbelievable because the characters have stepped out of an author's head and not anything remotely resembling real life. The only problem for reviewers was a lacklustre final third which some have tries to explain away as satire.
The day after I saw the movie, I was still mulling over that problematic final third, when it struck me that the whole thing built into a savage condemnation/diatribe at FEMALE EMPOWERMENT - something the Liberal Intelligentsia could never approve of, even if they noticed it1 Let me explain. the wife (Rosamund Pike who is OK) is upper middle class and well educated, but also a psychopathic, manipulative, uber-bitch. The two female TV anchors are well spoken, manipulative bullies and control freaks. The working class robber from the motel (don't ask) is a manipulative, vicious, controlling bitch. In fact, out of the six female characters in the last third of the film, only two are likable - one, the twin sister, loves her brother (Affleck) unconditionally, while the other, the detective, has treated the husband with outstanding even-handedness. And the non-moving pantie scene takes on another meaning - it is a visual which tells you that a man does not really enter an empowered female! But all you liberals will be screaming 'no.' So how is it Ben Affleck yells out - 'God save me from female empowerment!' Or did I hear it in 'Midsomer Murders' later in the evening!? Yes, well done, Mr Fincher, you really have slipped in a crafty anti-feminist movie right under their noses!
A last point - shouldn't the final scene have been of the two robbers in the motel recognising the wife on TV and saying to each other 'Now we can make some real money!' Pity the movie did not star Reese Witherspoon herself (given a producer credit here) and her husband had been played by ex Ryan Phillippe. Now that would have made for a really engaging and creepy movie!