Gone Girl

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: David Fincher/Starring: Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, Neil Patrick Harris, Tyler Perry, Carrie Coon, Patrick Fugit and Kim Dickens

If you're like me, you may be one of five people in our solar system who hasn't read Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl. It might not be surprising to learn a Yanomamo indian living within the densest tangles of the Amazon rainforest has read it. For us five who haven't, we have David Fincher's adaptation.

Fincher has a proven track record with the dark and edgy. But even the talent behind the terrific The Social Network and Zodiac can stumble into silliness, like the hard-to-take-seriously Fight Club and the pointless, time-wasting The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. So in which camp does Gone Girl lie? It pains me to say it's settled comfortably among the latter, which is too bad, considering the film version of the novel has been one of the most anticipated adaptations in recent memory.

How does the film go so wrong? For starters, the first half-hour to forty-five minutes contains the most unnatural sounding, glib dialogue I've heard in awhile. It doesn't help that Fincher can't get the actors to overcome the deficiencies. It also doesn't help that Rosamund Pike, who I assume was trying to lend her character an air of mystery, speaks in such a low, flat voice that not only sounded unnatural but was distracting. It's difficult to establish character when the main female protagonist's utterances calls to mind the Siri voice heard on electronic devices.

It seems almost superfluous to offer a movie synopsis when the plot is probably familiar to everyone in all hemispheres. It is also necessary to say very little because even a small helping of the plot will give most of the movie away.

Ben Affleck plays Nick Dunne, a former journalist and college professor who finds himself unemployed and without prospects though he owns a bar which was financed with a chunk of his wife's trust fund. Nick's seemingly perfect mate is Amy (the lovely Rosamund Pike), whose parents are authors of a famous children's series.

When the story begins, we see Nick visiting his watering-hole, where his twin sister Margo (Carrie Coon) tends bar. As they banter and jive, Nick discusses his five-year anniversary with Amy before he returns home. Upon entering his house, he finds a living room table overturned and broken. Nick phones the police, who arrive soon after. Following Detective Rhonda Boney (Kim Dickens) and her partner Jim Gilpin's (Patrick Fugit) investigation of the premises, Amy is presumed kidnapped. Among the clues left in the house is a white envelope that reads "clue 1" which Nick explains is part of an anniversary treasure hunt of sorts which was conceived by his wife. The white envelope is one of several the detectives and Nick will find over the course of the story. The envelopes will eventually incriminate him in some manner or another.

As the investigation unfolds, Amy's disappearance becomes fodder for the national media, particularly for tabloidy shows that devour sensational news stories. Initially supportive, the public begins to suspect Nick after a photo begins to circulate of himself posing with a poster of his wife; one that shows him grinning incongruently. Why anyone would be stupid enough to allow themselves to grin in such a situation and be photographed robs the plot of credibility and the film of some logic.

As the public turns against Nick and his guilt becomes a given in their perception, he is forced to hire a hot-shot lawyer who specializes in defending creeps and lowlifes named Tanner Bolt (Tyler Perry). Unable to afford the $100,000 retainer fee, Bolt agrees to represent him anyway.

As the anti-Nick sentiment reaches a feverish pitch, evidence accumulates to warrant his arrest. But a dramatic plot-turn reveals his wife is alive and well and hardly the victim of a kidnapping. It becomes abundantly clear she is plotting Nick's downfall.

All through the film, we hear Amy's voice as she narrates a personal diary she keeps which will, like the white envelopes, incriminate Nick and is yet another carefully crafted scheme to ruin him. Amy's history of plotting against her boyfriends and lovers soon comes to light as Nick begins to doubt his wife's kidnapping. At this point in the film, Amy is no longer the victim but a cunning, conniving hellcat who will leave no vindictive stone unturned to send her husband behind bars or to the gallows.

I found her motives somewhat weak and unconvincing. Why she bears a passionate hatred for men seems a little vague and the psychological history that fuels her anger is feeble. I'm sure it comes across plausibly in the novel but Flynn's script doesn't address the issues cogently.

The movie gets better as the story progresses after the terrible dialogue exhausts itself. But it doesn't get much better; only more heated. Much rides on Rosamund Pike's performance, in which she plays a calculating, disturbed psychotic reasonably well but there is something almost vaudevillian about it as if it's all played for laughs. Maybe that's Fincher's intention.

Only the ending is a surprise, as we get some sense of the weird, psychological bond Amy and Nick share though it barely clears the logic crossbar.

I really liked Kim Dickens performance as the tough cop and Tyler Perry in the lawyer role. It's nice to see him play something other than Medea and play it well.

It is interesting to note that apart from Tanner Bolt, all the people who impact Nick's life are women: the lead investigator, the two T.V. personalities who interview Nick, his sister who runs his bar, his mistress and Amy herself. What kind of statement are Flynn--and indirectly Fincher--making about women in society? Is it some kind of message about the transfer of power between the sexes? Nick appears as mostly passive next to the various female personalities. All the women challenge or threaten him at some point in the film, which is also quite interesting. Even the redneck couple who menace and rob Amy are exhorted to do so by the woman, who freely admits her culpability; the husband is merely an instrument. Nick's puzzling decision at the film's end suggests his wife holds a greater influence over him than we're led to believe.

The film didn't leave me with a feeling of unease the way Zodiac or The Social Network did. It made me chuckle derisively a bit and I shook my head, feeling a little perplexed but it elicited little else. If it isn't a good film, at least the ending avoids a happy, blandly conventional resolution.

Flynn has little to worry about; failed adaptations never reflect negatively on the novels. Gone Girl book sales should be remain fairly robust. Maybe I'll give the book a try. Maybe I'll ask the Yanomamo indians if they've seen the movie.