7 for the thriller, 8 for the message about our relationships

Rating: 8/10 (15 October 2014)

This movie starts out as any other thriller out there, the wife to the main character has gone missing after a few hours away from home and the search is on to find her. Nick played by Ben Affleck is a somewhat dull character and it's actually hard to tell if that's because he is played by Ben Affleck or if it's the reason Ben Affleck got the role. Sorry Ben. Under the surface Nick is clearly not as much of a nice guy as he would make others believe and any critic with a feminist view saying Nick is portrayed as a good guy with the wife being portrayed as a bad guy needs to put their sunglasses away.
Compared to Nick, the wife Amy is an intriguing character played by Rosamund Pike which I really think is an asset to this movie and hopefully we'll see more of her in the future. Besides Amy, few characters contain any substance to chew on for the audience and overall it's quite stereotypic. The story as it unfolds also feels a bit too fictional and Desi Collings played by Neil Patrick Harris feels downright silly.
However, the movie gets your attention and makes 2.5 hours go relatively fast. The dynamics between Nick and Amy as we are told is interesting.
But what this movie really does is using the format of a thriller to deliver a strong message about the roles we humans play in our relationships to get our needs fulfilled, both the ones we are born with and the needs we've been learned to have. This role playing is something we do everyday, mostly happening below our radar making it even more effective. When the movie in the end then introduce a very concrete and real role playing game above our attention radar we are tricked into thinking that this is something awful happening. But, just as we are told, in reality this is not at all different to the constant role playing we spend the days of our lives doing; "this is what marriage is".