Gone Girl

Surprise! Dustin loves another Fincher movie

Our story begins with Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck), coming home to the scene of a break in. His wife Amy (Rosamund Pike) is missing, and Nick leads the charge to find her. While staying with his twin sister Margo (Carrie Coon) the plot thickens as Amy's disappearance seems to be more like a murder, and less like a missing persons case. As the story unfolds we find out more about the relationship these two people shared, and what it means to this investigation. 

Sorry if the synopsis seems a bit thin here, but it is almost impossible to discuss my true feelings about the story without putting up spoilers. So I will make a compromise here and not discuss the story in my true review. I will save the length of my feelings on the story until after I give my rating, and give it the proper warning. Fair? Well, you don't really have a choice. Just know that the story here was good, amazing in fact. Without this story, the brilliant direction and almost perfect acting would still not be enough to save this movie. As it stands, this movie was almost flawless.

I would hope that in a perfect world many people know who David Fincher is. He is the director of most of those movies people (including myself) will not shut up about. Seven, Fight Club, The Social Network, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button are all masterpieces in a long lineage of pumping America with quality direction. Now we can add this piece in with his other works. He has a certain directing style that seems to define him, as does every director. Every work of his seems to try and scream "grey, stylized art," and at least that is a defining characteristic I can get behind. The shots here are beautiful, seamless, and elegant; guiding us through this maze of a movie with little effort. He makes the smart films that I love and breaths life into them that makes the movie more of an entity than an experience. 

It seems Ben Affleck had to remind everyone of what a good actor he is with all of the bad press his upcoming role of Batman is giving him. If it seems that the performances here are stiff, and forced, don't worry all will be explained in the scenes to come. The performances go hand and hand with exactly how we would expect people like this to act. It is hard to pick a favorite out of all the performances yet easy to see where the weak link lies. Tyler Perry as Tanner Bolt may act better in this movie then he does in any of the mind numbing crap he shills out for the sheep like masses, but his performance still drags the movie down to a somewhat noticeable degree. He isn't bad per say, he just shouldn't be acting alongside titans like Affleck and Rosamund. It was refreshing to see Neil Patrick Harris do something other then comedy, unfortunately his role in this movie was so infinitesimal I couldn't tell whether I wanted to see more of him in dramas or not.  

Final Verdict: Buy it It may be the words of a fan boy, but they are true words. I was as impartial as I could be towards the actors, and tried not to let my awe towards David Fincher's direction get in the way of my opinion; but David doesn't seem to like directing crap.

*SPOILER WARNING* STOP READING NOW IF YOU CARE ABOUT SEEING THE MOVIE

So, now I get to talk about the story. I found it to be so deliciously rebellious in the sense that you wanted to hate every character the movie portrayed. You wanted to hate Affleck for taking his wife for granted, cheating on her, and dulling his wit to the point where his wife could take advantage of his so "easily." You obviously wanted to hate the wife for being the supposed antagonist of the film, but that is where this movie's brilliance lies. You can't necessarily put all of the blame on the wife, even though she was obviously mentally unstable. The other part of this movie's triumph lies in the simplicity of it's execution. Throughout the entire thing I was trying to figure out where it was going when the answer was lying in front of me the entire time. Of course his wife faked her kidnapping, of course she was going to use and throw away a man that came to help her, of course he was going to let himself be used, of course they would choose to stay together. Every part of this movie screams the answers to you, while it plays, but I was to busy trying to look deeper to see the forest through the trees. The part that I am going to hate hearing about is how the audience is going to demand more from the ending. I know that I am going to hear some tool bag bitching about the ending, or the twists, when the twists here are helpful to the story and the ending was pure gold.