It gave me the biggest film boner ever.
Synopsis: Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) is a writer, married to another writer, Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike). One day, Amy disappears, and an investigation is launched into her disappearance. The story of their marriage and lives is shown from different perspectives and through flashbacks, allowing the audience to piece it together for themselves.
The Good: Firstly, the acting is excellent from everyone, which is actually a pretty big achievement considering Tyler Perry absolutely kills it in this movie. Personally though, I found Carrie Coon as Nick's sister as my favourite character and actress in the film. With a less dependency on fancy shenanigans, the firm focus of Gone Girl is on the people, which is one of it's greatest strengths. It's interesting to see Nick as an 'eye of the storm' character at the beginning, and later develop. Similarly, it's fascinating to see Amy's side of the story as well. But Gone Girl's greatest asset is the mystery offered by the plot, and allowing the viewer to piece the story together for themselves. Now, I despise predictable TV or Films, and going into Gone Girl completely blind, not knowing much even as the film progressed, I found immensely awesome, though I have a feeling it will rightly piss some people right off. And while not a technically challenging film, the screenplay is very nice, all well shot, and the unspoken interactions are just as important as the spoken ones.
The Bad: Due the global Film industry having not created the perfect film yet, and the closest we've got to hypothetical film perfection is in three films, one about prison, another about a playboy/ninja with a leather fetish, and the Mafia. Unsurprisingly, Gone Girl is not any of the above, even though it gains the arbitrary rating of 'very good' on my scale of...stuff. The main hurdle is one of basis, as the film deals with difficult subjects such as women and feminism, through domestic abuse, murder, blood, and a lot of other stuff most people would consider 'kinda gross'. If you're willing to accept that, then there's very little else to complain about. Gone Girl certainly isn't a technical masterpiece, but that's also a strength, and there's a scene towards the end with questionable levels of personal hygiene, but you'll probably see what I mean when you see it. But the biggest gripe is mainly one of pacing. You see throughout the film, time passing in hours and days, but the timespan gets bigger, into weeks, as the film ties up in the last ~45 minutes, which suggests they realised they're wasn't quite enough content to fill it out. On the whole, the film is fine, but in the last ~30 minutes (as a certain main character shows up again, you'll know), the film is just KA-THUNK. Timing stops completely, and the last 30 minutes is a horrible slog.
Overall: Yeah, it did good. I would certainly recommend Gone Girl. If you can get around the nasty stuff and the frankly bladder-busting duration, Gone Girl is an excellent film, that deserves a lot of credit for being pretty good. But remember, you may never be able to watch Gone Girl again, as you won't be able to bask in the glorious mystery of the plot.
8.5/10
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