Tightly made, slow to get going but then it gets going in classic thriller fashion

Rating: 7/10 (22 November 2014)

Gone Girl (2014)
First a warning—don't read any (ANY) reviews about this movie unless you want to have at least a little of the plot surprises ruined. I've tried hard to not say too much here, but it's impossible to be perfect. Read on, here and elsewhere, with caution.
On the surface, "Gone Girl" is a common thriller formula. A husband and wife are having a tense time of it, one of them seems to have committed a crime, the main character seems to be wrongly accused. And then some facts pop up in the wrong places and the story gets more creepy and complicated. This is what thrillers do—set up a murder, set up a likely perp, have the facts lead us in circles through lots of spooky territory.
On those terms this is fairly straight up story-telling. Yes, there is a sort of big twist an hour into the film, though you see it coming. But there are bigger twists in better thrillers. And yes there is some chilling psychology at play, both with the leading man, Ben Affleck, who plays a very regular guy with almost too much regularness (he's sometimes a bore), and with the leading woman, Rosamund Pike, who keeps it in check beautifully.
So what does actually make this movie hum along so well, once it gets going? The filmmaking. The formal, technical aspects of a movie make it good, in that slick David Fincher way (remember "Fight Club" above all). Transpose this plot into a film noir setting with sparse, contrasty black and white and much faster editing and, well, you have a better movie, perhaps. But you have the same result—a movie that uses drama in the camera, editing, and sound to propel the twisty plot.
There are some good commentaries out there about the roles the men and women get, and how they reflect on society. There is the chief detective, a smart and wily woman without the coy maternal edge of McDormand in "Fargo." There is the African- American lawyer who lights up every scene (this is none other than Tyler Perry, and he's great) and who is maybe the only one who gets what's going on outside of the couple themselves. And there is the wife, about whom I can say nothing.
So, yeah, get past the opening half hour which is kludgey and slow. Smell the quickening plot in the second half hour, and then hold on for the real stuff, the final three half hours as the conflicts actually clash and cause smoke and fire. To call this a post-modern thriller that wears its clichés proudly on its sleeve might be an excuse for using so many clichés, but it's all well done, very well done. See it.