Gone Girl Movie Reviews

David Fincher and screenwriter Gillian Flynn (on whose novel the movie is based) have hit the bulls-eye.

Despite having read and thoroughly enjoyed the book already, I found Fincher’s film gripping and handsomely mounted, and still packing a few nice surprises. Gone Girl doesn’t have the enduring appeal of one of my favorite Fincher films, ‘The Social Network’, but it’s a bloody good way to spend two and a half hours of your time. I’m going with four out of five. Don’t miss it.

For, if there are two sides to every story, few are held as dear as in a marriage — both of which the book perfectly understood. The problem always was going to be how to translate its gradual transitions as well as unexpected twists onto the big screen. In that, Flynn, also the screenwriter, couldn’t have asked for a better director than David Fincher, the clever exponent of tense relationships, misogynist protagonists, orchestrated violence, and people living double lives (Se7en, Fight Club, The Social Network, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo).

Gone Girl is a highly satisfying experience, refer to the second paragraph if you have any doubts about watching it.

Even if you have figured out the mystery, nothing will prepare you for the way the solution to the mystery presents itself. It’s a brutal deconstruction of imperfect marriages, and the nature for longing, togetherness and eventual hatred in the contemporary world. Surprisingly, the film plays out like a black comedy, even in the face of stunning violence, misogyny and misandry.

The film belongs to Gillian Flynn, David Fincher and Rosamund Pike. It takes an old-fashioned murder-mystery tale and transforms it into a new-age classic that deserves multiple viewings to fully appreciate its brilliance. If there’s only one film that you’ll watch in the next one year, let it be this one. This is one film that shouldn’t be missed at any cost. As if that wasn’t apparent already.

It might sound a tad cheesy, but how can you miss a David Fincher film? Do we seriously need a reason here? Based on the global bestseller by Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl is the perfect thriller you are craving for. Watch it for Rosamund Pike’s impeccable performance. Enough said.

Flaws and all, it still definitely is the Hollywood movie of the week. Go watch it!

It’s engaging and twisted in ways you wouldn’t imagine but leaves you wishing that there were so much more to it. Gone Girl is conceptually a combination of a lot of marriages around but let it not deter you from the institution. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t check under the pillow at night.

For those who have read the book, all you really need to know is that Fincher criminally sucks the life out of the ‘Cool Girl’ monologue. For the rest, this is a solid mystery film that falls short of greatness. In a nutshell, to quote Nick’s magazine-writerly complaint about Amy’s diary, it rests on too convenient an endnote.

Gone Girl will hold your attention for its lengthy running time, but whether you’ll laugh it off as chauvinistic pulp or be haunted by it depends on how much the idea of an intelligent woman scares you. If this film is any indication, she’s the stuff of Fincher’s nightmares.

Gone Girl has none of the moral ambiguity and depth that these two characters demand. In fact, we see little of them or know little of them. Will she stay gone? Will Nick get the death penalty in Missouri? Towards the climax, I somehow lost interest about the film as a whodunnit, caught as I was, with Fincher’s supreme cleverness in crafting a story without telling you much about his two protagonists apparently so gone in their heart and mind.

A curious take on the mystery of marriage that is entertaining and exploratory at the same time…