Gone Girl Review

For some random reason, kidnapping wives has been a popular movie subject in the last few weeks. In my most recent review, I discussed A Walk Among the Tombstones, which is a movie about a drug kingpin who goes to a private investigator played by Liam Neeson after his wife gets kidnapped and murdered. And now it's time to discuss Gone Girl, where Ben Affleck's wife goes missing on their five-year anniversary. This one I was especially excited considering the history of director David Fincher. In the past, Fincher has directed masterpieces such as Se7en and Zodiac. Yes, he's done several more fantastic movies, but I bring up those two because those are probably my favorite of his and Gone Girl seemed like it was similar in style to those two movies. And it definitely was. But it also wasn't. Gone Girl is Gone Girl. It's its own thing. And boy was this quite the movie. David Fincher certainly knows how to make a movie as once again he hits a home run.

Going into this, I had actually just watched A Walk Among the Tombstones a few days before, so I was definitely in the crime drama mood. I enjoyed that movie and towards the beginning of Gone Girl it felt fairly similar. A man's wife goes missing and before you know it, the police are on it and the detectives are interrogating Ben Affleck. Suddenly, Ben Affleck gets a ton of media scrutiny and before too long everyone is accusing him of killing his wife. At the start, you are on Affleck's side, but as the movie goes on you keep going back and forth in wondering if he actually did it or not. It was a typical crime drama and I was enjoying it just like I enjoyed A Walk Among the Tombstones. And then holy freaking cow! Right as I was settling down to try to solve this mystery in my head, the movie takes a huge turn and as I was watching it I am pretty sure that my jaw literally dropped. As in my mouth was wide open with my hands covering it. Then this becomes a completely different movie. What does it become? I'm not telling you. But what I will say is that's not the only time the movie takes a big twist. The second half of the movie is completely insane with several shocking twists and turns.

There's a whole lot in this movie that I want to talk about. The problem is, the more I talk about certain things, the more the ride would be ruined for you, so I'm going to use a lot of self-restraint in this review. So let's talk about the actors in this movie. First off, Ben Affleck. His character in the movie gets a whole ton of terrible scrutiny from the media and he spends the movie fighting that and trying to fix his image. What I really liked about that in this movie is that it's a reflection of what has happened to Affleck in real life recently. Specifically I am talking about him being cast as Batman. When that announcement came, the comic book world went on a complete revolt and based on the heavy criticism of the casting choice, you would think that they were going to go find him and crucify him. Which is silly in my perspective because the man is actually a really good actor. If you don't believe me, go watch Argo and then go watch this. Once you do so, you'll realize that the casting of him as Batman is not such a horrible thing after all because just like in Argo, Affleck is really good in this movie. Whether or not he's actually guilty of killing his wife is a separate discussion that I'm not even going to go close to touching.

Moving on from Affleck, let's talk about more actors. And how about Tyler Perry? Yes, the same Tyler Perry that directs a thousand movies a year, most of them including himself as the big fat black woman named Madea that is really annoying. I'm not a fan of Perry at all. In fact, I've learned to avoid his movies. However, he shocked the heck out of me in this because he plays Affleck's lawyer and he does a fantastic job. Yes, you heard me. Tyler Perry does a fantastic job. Next up, Carrie Coon. I'd actually never heard of her before this. Looking at her filmography, yeah I've still never heard of her. But she plays Ben Affleck's twin sister and the thing I love about her is that she is very good at being honest and unfiltered like a sibling should be. She asks the type of questions that only a sibling would ask and she does great at it. Next up in actors is Neil Patrick Harris. Out of everyone in the movie, he's had the most mixed opinions. Some say he's completely miscast. I personally actually liked him in this. I enjoy it when actors known for their comedy can step up and play a dramatic role. It's great. Unfortunately, my issue with him is that his character is underused. I wanted to dive into his character more. Give him a bigger role. But that didn't happen. Now if you've seen Gone Girl, you'll notice that I'm missing one major player and that's Rosamund Pike. I bring her up last because I'm wanting to hide her more in this review. I could spend two whole paragraphs on her and her character, and I want to, but the more I say about her the more it ruins your experience. But let me just say that she is legendary. One of my favorite performances from an actress ever.

In the end, David Fincher definitely knows how to make a movie and when you watch this movie that knowledge is definitely strengthened. Gone Girl starts as a typical, yet interesting crime drama but then it takes off and goes in directions that will leave you shocked at stunned at what's happening. The acting is brilliant in the movie, especially by Rosamund Pike. It is a long movie, but the length didn't bother me at all. It kept going and going, but I was loving every minute of it and didn't want it to stop. However, when it did finally stop, I was awe. I just sat there speechless, soaking it all in. No, this isn't a perfect movie. But I'm not going to talk about what I didn't like. I'm just going to leave this review by saying that Gone Girl is one of the best movies of the year. I give it a 9.5/10.