Overrated

Rating: 5/10 (28 February 2015)

Mild spoilers ahead.
Some guys wakes up, goes to a bar that we later learn he co-owns with his twin sister, gets a call from his neighbor, goes back home, finds that it looks like there was some attack and his wife is missing. It's the day of their anniversary. He's lucky enough that assigned to his case is the most dedicated detective ever, who spends 24/7 on this case--apparently it's the only one she has. Her side-kick officer insists that they should arrest the guy immediately. Quickly they find clues--letters from her wife as clues for him in their yearly anniversary raunchy scavenger hunt.
Now we learn how they meet in voice-overs from the missing woman as she reads her diary entries. She's a Harvard chick, he's some regular Missouri guy, they met at a party and hit it off immediately. Like most Americans they have a neat personality, but not much else. Everything goes well for a while. They have their own language, she wants nothing more than to be his wife. When his mother is diagnosed with cancer they move back to his town where she doesn't feel at home. Then the financial crises of 2008 hits and both end up without a job. Her parents are also in trouble and take almost all the money from her trust fund. What little is left, she uses to buy him the bar.
Back to the present, the guy looks like a jerk but plays along with whatever a guy in that situation is supposed to do--appear on TV, appear on events, candle-light vigils, etc. The American media is enthralled with the story as they often are when a blonde woman vanishes.
But then, after we start sympathizing with him, and even more with his cool sister, we learn that he has a mistress. And we learn that the woman knew as well, and how she meticulously planned her disappearance and made it look like he killed her. According to her side of the story, he ignored her, the marriage became hell, he became abusive. And she predicts he will kill her. The final clue they find is the partially burned diary.
We catch up with her on the day of her disappearance and how she ends up changing her appearance and driving to another town/state and checking into some motel, where she meets some ordinary couple. When they find out that she's got a bunch of money, they rob her. That changes everything for her. Now she can't conclude her plan, which involved ditching the car and maybe killing herself or making a body appear somehow so that her husband gets the death penalty.
Now she's forced to resort to an high school flame of hers, whom she hurt as well. But he's filthy rich and takes her in. When her husbands appears on TV, something which his lawyer recommended, he gives her signals based on their private signs. And somehow she finds again her love for him, or something like that. But now she has to deal with the rich guy and will try to recover her family somehow.
The first hour of so of Gone Girl is very strong, exciting, thrilling, since we don't know where this will go. It's unusual because it doesn't present some adolescent view of some perfectly good people vs. some perfectly evil people. It obviously manipulates the audience, to feel for the guy, then to dislike him, while liking her but then starting to dislike her. At some point you think you know what how things will turn out. That's when this movie seem another entry in the Wild Things series of movies, but this one far less sexy that the others. But things don't go that route either, in fact they don't go anywhere. After and hour and a half the movie starts progressively losing steam and concludes with the worst, most dissatisfying ending I've seen in a long time.
Along the way, the movie has some interesting things to say about marriage. Clearly the author must have had some very nasty experience, as is becoming the rule when marrying an American woman. There are some mild criticisms of the media culture as well, that hypes these stories, that sells the comic view of the world, demonizing he perceived villain, while glorifying the always innocent victim.
There is some ridicule of the Harvard-type people who are so arrogant and full of themselves they simply aren't equipped to handle criticism in any socially-acceptable way but rather become viciously vengeful. While it's not at all clear what on earth the motivation is for the woman flipping out, but it seems to be something along those lines. She was meant to be successful in her mind, but this ordinary guy ruined her life and on top of that cheated on her, while using the same moves that she thought were exclusively for her.
You keep waiting, hoping for a twist that never comes, something that would give this movie some meaning. They marketed the movie as having some secret, but really there's nothing there. Just as the people in the movie, the movie itself is happy to manipulate the viewer and lead him nowhere.