David Fincher's twisty mystery drama Gone Girl, based on Gillian Flynn's best-selling novel and starring Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike as Nick and Amy Dunne, had a $61 million budget. In just two weeks at the box office, it has grossed $78.3 million and is on the way to becoming Fincher's most successful film to date.
No small feat for a director whose resume boasts popular titles including Se7en, Fight Club, Zodiac, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (which grossed a career-best $127.5 million), The Social Network and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
So why all the hype?
For starters, Gone Girl leaves you with an awful lot to digest. What begins as a mystery centered on the disappearance of Amy Dunne -- Nick's witty, intellectual and strikingly beautiful wife -- swiftly and steadily develops into much more than that. By the time the ending credits rolled, I was thinking less about what happened to Nick and Amy and more about the message Fincher and Flynn were trying to convey.
Is Gone Girl a scathing allegory about the deflating or perhaps strangulating nature of modern marriages? Is it an extreme example of Only Child Syndrome gone terribly, terribly wrong? Is it a subliminal experiment meant to divide audiences between those who are willing to think for themselves and those who simply accept everything at face value? Is it a feminist piece that ultimately comes to a decidedly un-feminist conclusion?
I suppose that is for you to decide. Maybe it's just a movie about a guy who may or may not have murdered his wife and disposed of her body. Could be.
As for the performances, Affleck and Pike are steady forces throughout. I wasn't particularly fond of Flynn's dialogue during their "meet-cute" scenes in the early going -- much of their initial flirting came off contrived and unnatural -- but Affleck and Pike did their best with what they were given. The same could be said of Carrie Coon's (who plays Nick's loyal twin sister, Margo) dialogue in the first act. I would say the first 15 minutes of the film are the weakest, but it's all uphill from there.
Once the plot thickens and one twist leads to the next, the key characters begin to flesh out and the performances escalate to a whole new level. In the first half of the film, Coon is intended to serve as the obligatory comic relief, but she actually becomes more likable and believable as the heavy dramatic aspects of the story begin to effect her directly. She opened as the most annoying character and closed as quite possibly my favorite. I was really empathizing with her during some difficult moments in the final act.
Kim Dickens (Detective Rhonda Boney) and Tyler Perry (Tanner Bolt, Esq.) also deserve special mention for their impressive turns. Often times in a mystery the perpetrators seem to be one step ahead of the ill-prepared and stubborn cop characters throughout the proceedings, but that isn't the case here. Detective Boney is sharp, efficient, meticulous and most importantly, she does her best to reserve judgment in the absence of all of the facts. Dickens had my full attention every time she appeared on screen.
Perry, despite being in a small role, is a revelation. Known for the more obvious and mainstream humor he relies upon in the films he writes and directs, the laughs he generates here couldn't be any more to the contrary. As attorney Tanner Bolt, Perry entertains with his confident and assured delivery of well-timed quips. I had no idea that Perry had a character like this in his repertoire.
Going back to the stars, Affleck seems to have revitalized his acting career by selecting roles that don't require much acting. Once viewed as a cocky, outspoken performer, the veteran Affleck now seeks calm, reserved and at times catatonic characters. The range he has to display as Nick Dunne is very subtle. The same could be said for his central role in Argo.
As for Pike, she is sufficiently unsettling by film's end. To say much more about her character wouldn't be prudent of me.
All things considered, Gone Girl is certainly worth the price of admission. Perhaps its greatest gift is the conversation its ending is bound to start.
** JOHNNY FRO'S RATING: 9 out of 10 **
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