[There are still a few more much delayed busts from my time-capsule yet to be posted. Here, at least, is one of more recent ones; an example of a thriller that starts with a bang, only to end with a whimper.]
Gone Girl (2014) is an American mystery thriller film directed by David Fincher, starring Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, Neil Patrick Harris, Tyler Perry, and Carrie Coon, adapted for the screen by author Gillian Flynn from her 2012 novel of the same name.
In the end, cheating husband Ben Affleck is trapped in a loveless marriage to his controlling, murderer wife, Rosamund Pike, for the sake of the unborn child she claims to be carrying for him.
On the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary, after downing some liquid courage at the bar he runs with his twin sister, Carrie Coon, in the Missouran town of their birth, Affleck returns home to find his wife, Pike, from whom he intends to seek a divorce, missing and their living-room in disarray.
Summoning the police, Affleck's cool and at times glib demeanour soon raises suspicions in the investigating detective, who orders a full forensic search of the property, which uncovers an increasing amount of circumstantial evidence that suggests Affleck may know more about his wife's disappearance than he claims.
The inspiration for a universally loved children's literature block-buster creation of Pike's author parents, it's not long before the media-savvy pair has the whole community involved in the search for their missing daughter, the story being picked up by tabloid television reporters, who have Affleck tried and convicted in the public eye, even before the luminol sweeps for blood in the couple's kitchen have had a chance to dry.
Most damning for Affleck is a diary discovered by the investigating detective while following a series of clues, part of an anniversary treasure hunt tradition of Pike's, in which she documents the gradual decline of their relationship from its fairytale romance beginnings, through disappointment, doubt, distrust and even fear, on Pike's part. And when Coon discovers her brother ushering a strange young woman out of her home, that he is obviously involved with and who has spent the night there with him, even she begins to doubt her brother.
Worse still, when a claim emerges that the missing Pike was pregnant when she disappeared, the candle-lit vigil held to publicise the search for her turns on Affleck, forcing him to bolt for the cover of a police squad car.
Not until Affleck solves the final treasure hunt clue that leads him and his sister to an incriminating cache of up-market purchases he is supposed to have run up huge credit debts buying, hidden on her property, along with a taunting note and Punch and Judy toy from Pike, does Coon realise it is her brother who is the victim of Pike and not the other way round.
In reality, Pike's diary is mostly fiction, part of an elaborate revenge plot after Affleck's infidelity, designed to put him on death row. However, the scheme falls apart when Pike is robbed of the large amount of cash she is carrying while on the run, the final part of her plan to stage her own murder.
Broke and desperate, Pike turns to super-wealthy former Ivy League suitor, Neil Patrick Harris, who is delighted to take her back and use his huge fortune to save her from her, as she says, abusive husband.
Daunted by the case his wife has fabricated against him, Affleck seeks the help of notorious wife-murder defence attorney, Tyler Perry, who, while admiring Pike's Machiavellian brilliance, cannot resist the challenge of representing someone in such a tight spot as Affleck.
Perry's advice is that he should immediately confess his marital sins on national television, and throw himself on the mercy of the court of public opinion.
Watching Affleck's contritious chat show performance, while safely tucked away in Patrick Harris's remote and luxurious cabin in the woods, Pike convinces herself that, having learnt his lesson, Affleck is at last ready to become the perfect husband she always hoped she could transform him into. Unfortunately for Patrick Harris, who is keen for Pike to reveal her survival, he now forms the means by which Pike intends to return from the dead.
After secretly brutalising herself and staging a one woman show of supposed incarceration for the benefit of the cabin's security cameras, Pike completes her framing of Patrick Harris for her abduction by murdering him with a box cutter, before "escaping" in blood soaked lingerie, for a dramatic re-union with her husband, broadcast live by the national news channels camped out on their front lawn.
So relieved is the public by Pike's miraculous return, that not even the F.B.I. question the inconsistencies in her story that seem obvious to Affleck, Coon, Perry and the investigating detective who (for no apparent reason) has (conveniently for Pike) been taken off the case. And despite Affleck's adamant misgivings, Pike still manages to persuade him to continue with their marriage, on account of some fertility treatment chicanery that she has managed to pull off, while all this was going on.
Or, perhaps more briefly...
Psychopath wife frames husband and murders ex-boyfriend to save marriage and gets away with it.
Fincher has such an enviable reputation for producing edge of the seat rides that it is hard to imagine him ever putting a foot wrong on the big-screen thrill-o-meter. Sadly, with Gone Girl, we no longer have to imagine.
Not that there isn't much to admire and enjoy in the first act mystery scene setter, which is 24 caret Fincher, worthy of the film's promotional references to his classic Seven (1995).
Neither can the blame be laid at the feet of his excellent cast, who do their very best as the plot shifts gear into second act soap opera, then slides, unbelievably, into pantomime farce (even the characters laugh at the implausibility of the plot, at times) for the final third of a movie that, despite being a whole hour longer than most Hollywood fare, seems in a rush to wrap things up before anyone notices the sink-holes appearing in its plot.
Only the under-used and under-rated Patrick Harris, who seems to have drawn the short-straw of portraying the one-dimensional rabbit required by the story to be pulled out of its get-out-of-jail-free trick ending hat, struggles to breath believability into his character.
So disappointed was the audience at the screening I attended that there was a collective groan of resignation when the closing scene played. It's the exact same scene that opens the movie. Only our perspective is supposed to have changed, based on what we've learned.
All I learned was that even the considerable talents of Fincher cannot fashion a silk purse movie out of a sow's ear script. To misquote a famously misquoted quote "the fault, Brutus, lies not in our stars. But in our author."
Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gone_Girl_(film)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_(1995_film)
