Doesn't do much at first, but refuses to let you go until you've seen it's inventiveness

Rating: 9/10 (11 November 2014)

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning
Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) is a men's magazine journalist who's married to Amy (Rosamund Pike), the author of some successful children's novels. But beneath the surface, their marriage hides a lot of murky secrets and sordid lies. Shortly after their fifth wedding anniversary, Nick reports that Amy has gone missing. There then follows a well publicized appeal to help find where she's gone, but Nick's strange behaviour and lack of emotion make others believe he's got something to hide. But the truth is far more sinister and unbelievable than anyone could have imagined.
Having previously delivered another adaptation of a successful novel, in the shape of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, here David Fincher puts his hand to another novel that has enjoyed a fair bit of critical and commercial success, and presents a film with a very similar, almost identical sense of style, mood and tone, not to mention the same testing length stretching at just over two and a half hours. It's a bold, experimental effort, that takes the murder mystery genre and attempts to take it in new directions and explore new avenues and possibilities with it, that doesn't grip you much at first, but somehow mellows your patience and gets you to stick with it and go with it's flow ,as it twists and turns in all it's unexpected and baffling turnings.
At first, Affleck's detached performance, not one of his more explosive ones, and the lack of development with the married pair doesn't promise a film that's going to hold your attention for much over half an hour, much less over five times that amount, and the early warning signs of the modern curse of 'back story', where we learn of Nick and Amy's early courtship and such, don't bode that well. But the film simply holds your attention through out by refusing to follow the rules of what went before it, serving more prominently as an examination of media hysteria, witch hunting, trial by media, being guilty until proved innocent and how the vacuous culture we live in makes the true victims the real criminals. At various junctures, it promises to end, only to strike it's fiercest blow in the middle with an explosively revealing twist that makes it stand out. From here, it can only get more shocking.
Throughout, the film also benefits from a superb score, a drained, spaced out soundtrack that gives a Fincher film it's signature style. Fans of TGWTDT will certainly not be disappointed, while everyone else can experience a flawed but visceral experience unlike any other. ****