One twist too many

Rating: 7/10 (19 October 2014)

'Gone Girl' could have been an outstanding crime thriller. And watching the first part of the film, you get the impression it is. The husband of a seemingly happily married couple comes home one day to find his wife missing. The police starts an investigation, and more and more elements point in the direction of the husband being the killer. For the media, it's also clear he killed his wife.
A nice start for a crime thriller, and in the capable hands of David Fincher you're soon captured by the mystery. You presume the husband hasn't done it, but what could have happened? Just when you're busy trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together, Fincher surprises by giving it all away. In a long, flash-backed monologue, the disappeared wife tells the audience what happened, why it happened and how it happened. With the mystery now completely solved, the suspense is gone and the focus shifts dramatically. The question is no longer what happened, but how the husband will prove his innocence.
Other films would go awry after such a dramatic shift, but Fincher is such a good director he gets away with it. The film even gets an extra dimension: no longer is it just the husband whose life we're interested in, but also the wife. Fincher nicely knots the two sides of the story together when, after some dramatic events, husband and wife are reunited, but not happily.
I think the movie could have ended at this point. I even think it would have been a better movie than it is now. The story would have a surprising end, and the film would have a clearer focus. Instead, Fincher continues and pushes the movie off the rails. Some highly improbable things happen, the police stop investigating, and the story shifts a second time, this time to morph into a psychological drama about a failed marriage. The thriller aspect is completely gone, and there is hardly any added value beyond emphasizing elements of characters we already know.
I think Fincher has been too ambitious. Instead of making a very fine crime thriller, he wanted to add elements of a psychological drama. It makes the film too long and less powerful.
One last word about the acting: the lead characters are adequate, but I very much liked two supporting actors: Kim Dickens as the down-to-earth police detective, who lets her own common sense prevail over the prejudiced opinions of her assistant, and Tyler Perry as the smooth talking lawyer of the husband.