For anyone that hasn’t seen Gone Girl as of yet, you’re in for a tense and thrilling treat of a movie that shows the darker side of a troubled marriage. It makes for an edge-of-your-seat evening movie night in, making it arguably a better film to watch on DVD from the relative comforts of home than it was at a start and packed cinema. With a 2015 Academy Awards nomination for Rosamund Pike (Thunderbirds Are Go (2015)), it’s got a lot of impressive acting to bring the crazy story to frightening levels of reality.
It hit the big screen back in October 2014 before going on to be released on DVD, Blu-ray and digital download on the 2nd February 2015. It’s a psychological thriller that does a lot to surprise, even if you’re familiar with the storyline, which makes for a film that is hard to tare your eyes away from for a second.
Gone Girl is the movie adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s novel of the same name and it’s turned out to be one of the few that bucks the trend in terms of the movie being up to the expectations that the book lays down for it. It picks up with a relatively young married couple on the day of their fifth wedding anniversary, but things are far from happy families at the Dunne residence.
Nick Dunne, played brilliantly by Ben Affleck (Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice), gets back to their house having nipped out to clear his head in the wake of difficulties between the couple only to find it turned over a little and his wife, Amy, nowhere to be seen. What follows is a gripping affair of mind bending proportions as Nick starts the process of trying to help the police in their investigations to find his wife and clear his own name in the face of irregularities at the crime scene.
While Affleck puts in a very convincing performance as the complex husband, showing flashes of a quick temper and emotional disconnection in and amongst being close to his family and friends, it’s Rosamund Pike’s part in the film that makes it what it is. The actress puts in the performance of a lifetime as Nick’s missing wife, narrating her side of the situation through the journal she’s written.
With her previous roles being mostly comic in nature with The World’s End in 2013 and A Long Way Down in 2014 it’s an incredible transformation and demonstration of the full range of the acting skills of the former bond girl, who will playing Lady Penelope in ITV’s Thunderbirds reboot later in 2015. Though she narrowly missed out on picking up the Academy Award for Acress In A Leading Role, with the Oscar going to Julian Moore for her role as a professor dealing with the harsh realities of early onset Alzheimer’s, Pike was definitely a deserving nominee for her ability to make the performance so convincing.
The rest of the cast also put in solid performances to build out the setting and intricacies of the plot, teasing the tense situation out with drip fed progression. Neil Patrick Harris turns out to be a genius cast addition, pulling off his own acting transformation to become Amy’s stalker Desi, Tyler Perry (Star Trek (2009)) plays the perfect hot-shot lawyer as Tanner Bolt and Carrie Coon as pretty strong dialogue interaction with Nick as his sister Margo. Kim Dickens works out well as Detective Boney, who leads the investigation into Amy’s disappearance, and even bit-part player Emily Ratajkowski, who you might recognise from the video for Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines, is very convincing as Andie Fitzgerald, the girl Nick’s having an affair with.
It all intersects well thanks to Gillian Flynn’s screenplay, building on the success of her book. It’s not flawless with a couple of points not quite adding up in terms of character’s that are portrayed as being incredibly intelligent and calculating doing seemingly daft things to keep the plot moving towards its intended culmination, but these minor blips are easily forgiven the the grand scheme of what is otherwise a very good storyline.
Director David Fincher does a brilliant job of tieing it all together and drawing very impressive performances out of the surprise cast, but with the likes of Seven, Fight Club and Zodiac in his back catalogue we wouldn’t expect anything less. Gone Girl is without doubt a must watch on DVD, Blu-ray or digital download for anyone that missed it at the big screen, and with such scintilating performances from the cast we’d have to say that’s it’s definitely the kind of psych-thriller that fans of the genre would watch more than once.
Gone Girl DVD review: 4.2/5
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