Quite possibly Fincher's best

Rating: 10/10 (18 March 2015)

"Gone Girl" is director David Fincher's tenth movie and his fifth that I've seen and dare I say it might be Fincher's best film. The movie is not just an intricate mystery thriller film, but it has interesting, realistic characters, a well thought-out story, and a well done undertone theme about public perception.
The best part of the film are the characters of Nick (Ben Affleck) and Amy (Rosamund Pike) Dunne. Amy has faked her death and left an awful story behind that paints Nick as a villain. What did Nick do? In most films, Nick would have been an innocent guy who was just with a crazy girl, but not this movie. While a lot of the stuff Amy said about Nick was a lie, he was cheating on her, which set off her intricate revenge plot. The movie is not asking you to like or even sympathize with one or the other. It's just asking you to understand them. Nick started to have an affair after he felt like he and Amy weren't working out, which led Amy to her revenge scheme.
The movie's thematic undertone dealing with public perception had two different levels to it, one level being in terms of the movie and the other being in terms of the cast. The movie is about the disappearance of Amy Dunne and the investigation that ensues. During this time, Amy, who's undeniably in the wrong, is painted off as America's sweetheart while her husband Nick, who did do something wrong but doesn't deserve what's happening to him, is turned into the most hated man in the country. But wait, it goes farther than that. At one point, a journalist asks Nick to smile for a picture, which he does so and immediately earns backlash for it. Then, when the girl (Emily Ratajkowski) he's cheating on Amy with comes forward, she dresses, as Amy puts it, like a babysitter, to look as innocent as possible.
The idea of public perception and not knowing the full truth is done so even with the cast. Neil Patrick Harris and Tyler Perry, who both do great jobs in the movie, are more well known for comedic work and, this being a serious drama, you'd think they wouldn't be cut out for it. Then, we have Rosamund Pike, who gives the best performance in the whole movie, who is a fairly unknown actress so we don't know what to expect from her. Then, there's Ben Affleck, who is an actor that for reasons I don't understand, people hate. So, there's an actor people seem to really hate being a victim, an actress we know nothing about that the audience figures out what to think about her as the movie progresses, and then there'r Harris and Perry, who are comedians in a drama. All of these people have public perceptions of them that are challenged by this movie.
"Gone Girl" is just another movie that proves David Fincher is a fantastic and talented filmmaker. The movie does not become a jumbled mess even with all of the twists and turns in the script, the acting is all really good, the characters are interesting, and the public perception angle is handled superbly. If you haven't seen it, I would strongly advise you to check out "Gone Girl" immediately.