Gone Girl (2014)

	Directed by: David Fincher	COUNTRY USA GENRE Thriller/Drama NORWEGIAN TITLE Gone Girl RUNNING TIME 149 minutes
	Produced by: Leslie Dixon Bruna Papandrea Reese Witherspoon Ceán Chaffin
	Written by (based on her novel): Gillian Flynn

Cast includes:
CHARACTER	ACTOR/ACTRESS	RATING
Nick Dunne	Ben Affleck
Amy Elliott-Dunne	Rosamund Pike	½
Desi Collings	Neil Patrick Harris
Tanner Bolt	Tyler Perry	½
Margo Dunne	Carrie Coon
Detective Rhonda Boney	Kim Dickens	½
Officer James Gilpin	Patrick Fugit	½
Noelle Hawthorne	Casey Wilson
Ellen Abbott	Missi Pyle
Sharon Schieber	Sela Ward
Andie Fitzgerald	Emily Ratajowski
Marybeth Elliott	Lisa Banes
Rand Elliott	David Clennon
Tommy O'Hara	Scoot McNairy

Review

David Fincher's Gone Girl, an adaptation of the novel by Gillian Flynn, is a rich but flawed film. It's a callous and painstaking tale of a seemingly happily married man who comes home to find his wife has disappeared under suspicious circumstances. The subsequent investigation invites an influx of interpretations, logic and emotion from the many semi-realistic characters and the viewer alike. The film is playful and edgy, but Fincher doesn't play his audience like a piano as Hitchcock did; he plays it like a drum set, pounding on us, sometimes rhythmically, sometimes cacophonically. I'm not even sure how much he enjoys it all. What Fincher most certainly does enjoy is the media satire scattered around the film. It's not much fun – more sickening – but nevertheless effective, as the hordes of attention-grabbers and cynical journalists augment the pain we feel through our main protagonist Nick Dunne. The fact that Ben Affleck gives a level-headed, driving performance in this part is crucial, because it balances the story and title character's outrageousness, keeping us interested, keeping us guessing, even caring. Although somebody should have had the guts or authority to make Flynn keep her script tighter, you're never sure what's going to hit you in Gone Girl, except that it probably resembles one of Fincher's drumsticks, and that it will go on, and on, and on, until you're so numb that you no longer feel the small jabs of pain.