Nick: 3.5 of 5 stars Jenius: 4 of 5 stars Average: 3.75 of 5 stars (Live Canary)
Nick: Gone Girl is a chilling story about the disappearance of a beautiful suburban wife (Rosamund Pike) and the media circus that pounces on the number one suspect, her off-putting husband (Ben Affleck). The film is more of a comedy masquerading as a drama than the trailer would have you believe.
Jenius: It’s a cold blooded movie. It definitely made me cancel a date I had planned. It’s not just a movie about a missing girl, it’s also a biting criticism on how the media and public opinion can change, flip and skew everything at a moment's notice. Like many of David Fincher’s films, it’s a small peek into the mind of a sociopath. I really dug this movie.
N: That’s funny considering that one of the blurbs in the trailer is “The best date movie of the decade!”. The first half of the film had me hooked even when the “twist” happens I was still in love with the movie. But as the story unraveled and more time was spent after the “twist” the more silly and preposterous the film became. The movie should be seen a second time before you should fully judge as I will return to it thinking of it as more of a satire instead of a mystery.
J: I never read the book so I thought it was going to be a mystery, then it became like it an episode of Law and Order (which they said it themselves in the movie) then after the twist, which caught me off guard, it became a satire. Once the Nancy Grace character appeared the film became obvious in its message. Very few movies nowadays can surprise me, but I think it was because in this day and age, we view woman as the victims of their lumbering, abusive husbands. We have been nursed by lifetime movies of the week, the media, social outcry, etc... it’s always in our face.
N: It takes quite a bit to surprise me these days as well. This film did not surprise. It might be because film noirs are my favorite films, mysteries are my favorite books and my favorite TV shows often border somewhere around adventurers, cops, or The Venture Bros.
The trailer plays up that he killed his wife so much that I believe the opposite is true when going into the film. Needless to say I still enjoyed the moment when it revealed the “twist”. I keep using the quotes because the surprise comes so early on that discovering it would only ruin the first 45 minutes of the film.
J: Funny thing just happened! A story came on my Facebook news feed stating “Just saw Gone Girl with my hubby for our anniversary…not the best one to watch for the day.” This is definitely true. The trailers did misinterpret the movie a bit. Batfleck de-evolves right before our eyes as they look for the girl, from a romantic charmer, to a swarthy, unfaithful brute. All the while the diary of the woman plays as narration. The diary had me convinced because of the husband’s infidelity. But Fincher is always throwing curveballs at us to make us look left, so he can surprise us on the right.
N: Fincher might be the best at bringing tension into a situation. The Social Network convinced me of that. Never would I have thought a movie about Facebook could be entertaining and yet it was my favorite film of that year. Which also had to do with the amazing score done by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (who both stuck around for this movie as well). The score is normally my least favorite parts in films but these sounds are some of the greatest I’ve ever heard. Reznor has an article in this weeks EW which he stated, what I have always believed to be true, the score is not the star so make it subtle but effective.
J: The music was pretty fitting as it underlined the theme of each scene. There were never and “DUH-DUHS” to overstate the obvious, and it was all very effective. In fact, all the technical aspect of this movie were very effective to me. Sometimes I do find it hard to see Trent Reznor doing the score, as i’m always excepting odd clangs and ticks while someone screams “I want to f’ you like and animal”. I expect 90’s Nine Inch Nails playing in the background. I’m still wrapping my head around him doing scores about movies not set in an industrial goth club in the fall of 1997, but that’s my own bias… ahhh… good times.
N: There is nothing bad to say about this film beyond the way the film unravels in the final third and its not so much the change of tone as the implausibility of the ending that’s been chosen and the events leading up to it. I believe I’m very good at suspending disbelief, i.e. Lucy, but the technical aspects, plot and acting all led me to believe this is a story based in the real world and the ending is as far from reality as any film this year. Yet I still fully enjoyed the film and can’t wait to see it again.
J: As for the ending, I did and didn’t enjoy it because I need closure. I want to see that bitch get her comeuppance! I want to see Batfleck’s revenge! She has to be one of the most vile, twisted, manipulative villains this side of a horror movie. I didn't want her to get away with what she had done. I felt bad for Batfleck at the end.
N: I don’t mind her getting away with it, in fact, I really like that she does. It’s a unique thing in American cinema for the criminal to get away with their crime such as when the British film Kind Hearts and Coronets (one of my favorites) was released in America they were forced to add an alternative ending where the killer pays for his crime. My problem was with the way she got away with the crimes after her fake kidnapping that I had a problem with. I found that her story while on the run was very uneventful, unfulfilling, and lacked the intelligence that she had shown when framing her husband for her kidnapping/murder. Though all this didn’t put me off the eventual ending. It was the murder of her former lover (Neil Patrick Harris) and her story of how she was kidnapped by him and how she eventually escaped that seemed so implausible. Wouldn’t the former lover be one of the first suspects considering he has been charged with stalking her at a prior time to where the cops would have searched through all of his assets to the point where should would have been found? There are many more holes in her statement but I’ll shut up because the film was very enjoyable and that’s all that truly matters.
J: Let us talk about your last statement in order: 1: Nah, that bitch needed to pay. She should not have gotten away with it. Maybe because she was a rich and beautiful, white girl and in the media’s eyes, they can do no wrong. From a minority's perspective I can see this whole heartly (not to play the race card, but in the media’s outlook there is a nugget of truth to that). American media loves that type of thing. Sensationalism sells! That’s why the cops/media are so quick to believe her story about NPH and not look deeper into it. But your idea of implausibility was shared by the cop, played expertly by Kim Dickens. 2: Because you're jaded is why you didn't like her ‘on her own’ story. Jaded in the sense of we love to watch movies to the point where we see the finer details within them. I loved her story until she got NPH involved. It was fulfilling as she got robbed, beaten and became homeless. I loved it. A dose of the real world is sure to knock anyone, even a manipulation she wolf, off her high horse. 3: You are right that we can nit pick all day, but the bottom line is that this was a very enjoyable movie. Was it “based on a true story”?
N: It was not but it was based on a novel by a former EW columnist by the name of Gillian Flynn.
J: Man, with her being all evil and manipulative, I thought it was based on a true story about one of my exes. I think everyone should go see it… but not with your partner or on a date.
