In theaters Friday, Oct. 3.
3 1/2 stars (out of 4)
Us Weekly Film Critic and Deputy Editor Mara Reinstein filed the below dispatch from the New York Film Festival.
Oh yes, it's very much by the book.
But when the book is a brilliantly crafted page turner, that's a good thing. Indeed, fans of Gillian Flynn's 2012 best seller about marital deceit will be gratified by this hotly anticipated adaptation (which premiered Sept. 26 at the New York Film Festival). And those coming in blind will behold mastery in the art of suspense.
And what about the merits of that controversial final act? Well, that's still up for debate.
First we drop in on Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) and his beautiful wife Amy (Rosamund Pike) on their fifth wedding anniversary. They're the kind of couple who you'd love to invite over for a dinner party: He's a laid-back Midwesterner and former magazine editor who recently opened a bar with his twin sister in his native Kansas City; she's a classy New Yorker and subject of the smash Amazing Amy kids books (written by her parents). You know them. You like them. It can't be understated how important it is to have relatable protagonists.
On this day, Nick comes home from work and sees a crime scene inside his nondescript suburban home. Amy is nowhere to be found. What happened? Surely the good-natured and cooperative husband, so eager to please the detectives and the helpful locals, couldn't have had anything to do with it. Or, wait, maybe he's just playing the role of the good-natured and cooperative husband. Affleck, now in his 40s with grey-specked hair, may not seem the obvious casting choice — but few others could have put such an uncomfortably affable spin on this character.
Yet soon, Nick becomes suspect No. 1 — thanks in part to the court of media-led public opinion. (It won't take a HLN junkie to recognize the frighteningly accurate portrayal of our 24/7 consumption of white-collar murder. Missi Pyle's brash Nancy Grace-esque cable anchor leads the brigade). The lead investigators, meanwhile, have uncovered the cracks in this loving marriage: The duress started when the couple lost their jobs from the recession and Nick insisted that they uproot to Missouri so he could take care of his ailing mother. They also fought over whether to have kids to the point where he once shoved her to the floor. And, perhaps most damning of all, there is the matter of his extramarital affair.
The evidence is all right there, in colored ink, in Amy's journal. She wrote in it for years, sharing her uncensored thoughts about the couple's sexy courtship and their most bitter arguments. She never once told her husband about it, but she narrates the details for us via telling flashbacks.
Of course this is no perfunctory whodunit. Flynn, who adapted her novel, weaves an inspired maze of twists, only for them to all lead to a complex meditation on contemporary marriage. As an added bonus, she sufficiently modifies that muddled ending. (Though some might argue that she should have just scrapped it entirely). The film also benefits from an ace behind the camera, as director David Fincher (The Social Network) creates a moody and engrossing sense of uncertainty throughout the 145-minute opus. One startling act of violence perfectly befits the man who once served us Gwyneth Paltrow's head in a box in Seven.
There's just one quibble on The Girl herself. The elegant and statuesque Pike, an unknown to most moviegoers, certainly looks the part. Yet she plays Amy too icy in passages in which she needs to be flat-out sympathetic. Even during the couple's genuinely blissful moments, she lacks any semblance of a convincing spark with Affleck.
Revealing anything more might result in a movie critic's disappearance. Just know that this vital factor prevents a solid thriller from becoming a spectacular one.
