Another classic Fincher movie

Rating: 9/10 (27 December 2014)

Gone Girl - Review (Spoilers)
Gone Girl is the latest directorial outing from David Fincher starring Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike in the leading roles, based on the Best Selling novel by Gillian Flynn who also penned the screenplay for the film.
Fincher, like all great directors there are a few things we can assume about any project he's attached to before seeing even a single shot. The tone, the look, the atmosphere of the film. Fincher is truly a master of the craft and Gone Girl is yet another great entry into his filmography.
Much like Fight Club and Girl with the Dragon Tattoo before it, Gone Girl once again represents a perfect marriage of source material and Director. A common aspect that underpins all these movies is shared theme of social introspection, a study on the darker sides of the human psyche. Where Fight Club explored the futility a male machismo in modern society, Zodiac presented the dangers of our cultural obsession with the macabre, Gone Girl is very much a twisted view of contemporary relationships, the violent clash of male and female ego.
The plot of Gone Girl cannot be properly examined without going into spoilers which will be expressed from here on, you have been warned.
Gone Girl as is depicted in the trailers revolves around the disappearance of Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike) and the following media circus that revolves around her husband Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck). Nick and Amy as displayed in various flashback have the perfect relationship. They are both intelligent, good looking, affable young people living in New York when they meet and we view their ongoing partnership in stages as it progresses via entries in Amy's diary.
They fall on hard times, Nick loses his job, Amy's parents have financial difficulties, Nicks mother gets cancer which leads to them moving back to Missouri, a point of contention for Amy. Nick is unwilling to work on their problems and Amy's attempts to fix their relationship are only attempts to fix Nick himself, she does not look inward for any hope of solving their ongoing issues.
One day Amy is gone and the resulting police investigation paints Nick in a very unfortunate light and we are lead to believe that he is the worst kind of man. He was having an affair with a younger woman, he paid little to no attention to his wife outside of sexual conquest, Nick got lazy and is punished by the media accordingly. Eventually it seems there can be no other explanation, Nick definitely killed his wife. Only he didn't.
Turns out Amy felt that as Nick was no longer pulling his weight in their relationship she would take matters into her own hands and frame her husband for her own murder and she took elaborate steps to ensure that Nick would be convicted. So we have an underachieving husband who does not appreciate his better half and a wife who takes extremely disproportionate action in response. You see where I'm going with this right?
Now although it would be fair to say that both parties are at fault here we do end up leaning toward Nick, unless you're the type of person who thinks being a bad husband should be a punishable offense with the possibility of the death penalty in which case you would be squarely on team Amy in this instance. Amy who as it turns out is blatantly a complete psychopath, played flawlessly by Rosamund Pike. Honestly I would put her performance right up there with fellow big screen psychopath Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins, Silence of the Lambs). Affleck also turns in a brilliant performance and carries the film on his absurdly broad shoulders (here's looking at you Bruce Wayne)
Believe it or not there are actually still a few twists and turns throughout the film but unlike most movie adaptations of book thrillers this is not a story built on twists it's built on characters and excellent work of Gillian Flynn shines through and goes to show the advantages of keeping the original writer on board for the film version. The story like all great books is built around a novel concept which places the characters into impossible situations and then seeing how those characters deal with them.
I loved this film, like all great Fincher movies it stays with you long after the end credits, not just a throwaway piece of entertainment but a truly thought provoking experience.
☆☆☆☆☆