Good Movie with a Bad Ending

Rating: 8/10 (30 December 2014)

Gone Girl was for the most part an interesting mystery wrapped around the personality of a disgruntled wife, who goes out for revenge after learning her husband is having an affair. The story line has many twists. First you meet a loving couple who you think have the perfect marriage, only to learn that underneath all this is a very dysfunctional couple. The shocking part comes when you learn just how psychotic the wife Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike) is. Her husband Nick (Ben Affleck) is no saint. He has an affair, doesn't want children and moves his wife from Manhattan to Missouri to take care of his ailing mother without asking her. He loses job and veggies-out playing video games, uses her money to fund their lifestyle and his business failures. However, even with all of this it is Amy that really shocks us with her duplicity and just how far she's willing to go to get revenge against those she feels betrayed her.
Rosamund Pike does a great job displaying this duplicity. She's another one of those great UK actresses that can carry off both sides of Amy's personality and have it be believable. Ben Affleck does a decent job playing the shocked and duplicitous husband as well. Neil Harris kept the suspense going, not knowing why he was after Amy, and in the end paying for his obsession with her. I thought Tyler Perry did a great job as Nick's lawyer.
If I had a problem with this film it was with the script. The ending was pretty stupid. After all that goes on with Amy and Nick, even after he realizes just how psychotic she is; knowing that she is a murder and knowing she tried to have him killed as well for her phony murder, he decides to stay with her? Really? Not very believable in my opinion.
It's a shame the ending was so bad for most of the film was pretty good. As I'm always reminded good actors can only do so much, the script and directors really can make or break a story. A much more believable ending would have been to have the police detective who was pushing the case to find evidence that Amy was really culpable for the whole set up. She deserved justice for her actions and never received it.