Gone Girl

Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike in Gone GIRL
Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike in Gone GIRL

A decade ago Ben Affleck’s career looked gone. His fortunes went into turn around when he directed Gone Baby, Gone and he received the tinsel town all is forgiven for Gigli seal of approval when he took home Oscar for directing  Argo.

With Academy Awards for writing (Good Will Hunting) and directing, Affleck is now well and truly back on track as an actor appearing in GONE, GIRL, a seriously superior thriller from film maker David Fincher.

Ben plays Nick Dunne, whose wife of five years, Amy, has gone missing.

The couple’s cat had been let out of their pad and a neighbour had summoned Nick home to tend to the pussy. Nick discovers a scene of a struggle and his spouse absent.

Public perception pandered by the press paints Nick as perpetrator but what can he do? Cry “The Moggie took my Amy?”

The focus of the media is ferocious stoking a feeding frenzy of guilty until proven innocent.

They present Nick as a philandering prick, which he is, but it doesn’t make him, fait accompli, a murderer.

Rosamund Pike is amazing as Amy, a woman whose childhood had been hijacked by a manipulating mother who engineered and embellished her daughter’s life to fit into a series of bestselling books. Inspired by Amy but aspiring to an unreal perception of perfection, the mother manufactures a maladjustment in her offspring that skews her impression of perfection. In her portrayal, Pike is perfect.

As the investigating police officer, Kim Dickens, mixes the forensic with instinct as the case morphs from missing person to murder. She is the ethical oasis of the movie.

And Carrie Coon as Nick’s twin sister, Margo, is magnificent as the conflicted but unwaveringly supportive sibling, not only suffering the taunts of a hostile community but the possibility of being tried as an accomplice.

Scripted by Gillian Flynn from her bestselling novel, the film is directed by David Fincher, and bears all the hallmark style and accomplishment of his previous forays into dark minds and motives, such as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Zodiac and Seven.

GONE GIRL will resonate with those who remember the Lindy Chamberlain case and the script has literary ties with the likes of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible.

Closer to the bone, the film will reverberate with any marriage that has passed its fairy tale romance phase and is dealing with disappointments and compromise.

The honeymoon is over- now the horror.