Movie Review: Gone Girl

Gone Girl (2014)


With his wife's disappearance having become the focus of an intense media circus, a man sees the spotlight turned on him when it's suspected that he may not be innocent.    Short synopsis of Gone Girl taken from IMDb.com   

The review:  I saw the trailer for this one when I went to the cheap seats to see Fury, and thought "Hmmm...  That looks mildly interesting."  So when I stopped by the Redbox on my way home from work on a Saturday afternoon, and they flashed that, "Wait, you can get another rental today for only fifty cents more"-bit, I decided to try it.  When I started to watch the film, I noted the part at the beginning where the content rating info is shown, and the list of reasons why it was rated that way.  I hadn't placed the film as being an "R" rating when I got it from the box, and I thought to myself, "Oh my."  We've got strong sexual stuff, nudity, language and graphic violence. 

I'm not one who quails up front at such things.  But I suppose as I get older, I look for more "family-friendly" options.  My wife, who didn't care about seeing the movie but happened to be in the room when I started it, quipped that she was surprised how people would say that they didn't care about violence in a film but would dismiss it because of sex.  She and I are opposites that way.  Sure, violence does affect me, but I can mentally set it aside more quickly than gratuitous sex, which seems to leave an aftertaste throughout the rest of the viewing.

Coincidentally, does this mean you'll never see a review on my website for the recent box-office smash Fifty Shades of Grey?  I have no intention of reading either the books, nor of watching the film.  And if I'd gotten the impression from the original trailer that Gone Girl was about sex specifically as a subject, as Fifty pretty much is from what I've heard, I'd have skipped it too.  Does that make me a hypocrite?  If so, then hypocrite I am, I guess.


Yes, so having mentioned the proverbial elephant in the room (Fifty, that is), I had to use the most tasteful recent cultural reference to it I could find.  So... creepy.

I'm wandering here.  Where was I?  Oh yes, the film started.  My wife was soon sucked into it.  And I must admit, though I was intent on half-watching it myself, while working on the computer at the same time, I ended up glued to the screen much more than I had planned.  You see the trailer for the film, which portrays this as a story about a husband who probably murdered his wife and is doing a somewhat clunky job of trying to cover it up.  This is exactly what the filmmakers want you to think. After all, you have the story right from the supposedly-dead wife's own mouth.  Interspersed throughout the first two-thirds of the film are voice-over short snippet entries from the wife's diary, in which she relates meeting, falling in love with, marrying, and then eventually coming to distrust and fear her husband, played by Ben Affleck.  But then you get to that two-thirds mark and things go...  a bit crazy.

Though I am somewhat loathe to admit it, I enjoyed this film.  I do think it could have been done without some of the coarseness added.  Some of it, such as the shower scene near the end of the film, couldn't have been skipped effectively (no hanky-panky here; it’s the last thing from your mind at this moment).  I don't know.  "Modern" folks would say I'm quibbling too much, but I think the story here could have been told just as pointedly if the filmmakers had tried to avoid some of the harsher stuff, or done it just off-stage, so to speak.  We could have alluded to some of the sex without being as graphic, and the eventual scene of strong violence could have been done low-tech and still have worked.  You could still make this an "R" rated film without making it SO "R" rated.  Sure, keep the wife's "f-bomb" laden speech patterns (they do have their place in establishing her character), and the sex could have remained but been less pornographic, and the violence done in the manner I have already pointed out.  The adult themes of the film alone would have guaranteed an "R” rating.

Affleck playing Daredevil in the titular role.  He takes a bit of the blind superhero motif into Gone Girl, I think.  You'd have to be blind not to see something was totally messed up here. / Source: gamerfocus.co

OK, my quibbling done, I'll say what I liked about the film.  Well...  I won't purposefully spoil the ending, to be honest.  As I have heavily alluded to, at two-thirds of the way through the film, where probably most viewers are almost done deciding for themselves whether they think Affleck's character is guilty or not, and coincidentally whether he is total scum or not, the movie takes a turn that could have been foreseen, but then goes with it in such a way as to really stretch you as a member of the audience.  And for a little while, you begin to think that turnabout is quite indeed fair play, when a certain character seems to have come into his or her own version of hell.  And then things go off the rails even further, and the movie ends on an odd note.  In fact, that last quarter of the film, where the graphic violence occurs, and the plot twists around on itself, I had already moved over to the computer and was trying to do the work I had intended to do throughout.  But it wasn't because the film had bored me, but because...  well I started feeling a bit uncomfortable.  The twist at the end may be nothing for the jaded, and in truth I'm not as jaded as I probably ought to aspire to be, based on the things I’m willing to put in my mind.  For me, Gone Girl’s content was a bit much.
 
Really, Gone Girl sucked me in and dragged me around just like it was made to do.  I knew on some level that something must be going to happen to flip the proverbial switch on the story, as it bills as a tale about a husband who probably killed his wife and is trying to hide it, as I've said.  But I fell for that more than I should have, and paid for it in the last third of the film by being both attracted and repelled to the movie's twist, as a consequence.

I guess I'd have to say that I was initially hooked by this film's premise (before coming to the swing point, that is) as it was sold to me because I recall watching on the news the Susan Powell case.  For those of you not aware, this was an instance in which the wife vanished while the husband and two kids were supposedly away on a camping trip.  Of course, the husband looked guilty from early on, but there was a big deal made over "finding" Susan.  As developments escalated, the husband looked more and more guilty, and the wife looked more and more likely to be dead.  In this case, what it looked like was what it was, and the story had a tragic ending when the husband committed murder-suicide, killing his kids and then himself after the pressure on him began to be too much.  A hand-written note from Susan was later recovered, stating "If I die, it may not be an accident, even if it looks like one."  The writer of the book that Gone Girl is based upon, and the subsequent film from that novel, couldn't have a better place to jump off from.  And I expected the story to follow the same general lines as those true events, but... well it didn't end that way. 

One of the Missing Persons posters used in the Susan Powell disappearance case.  For more info on this story, see the link here. / Source: scaredmonkeys.net

That ending, by the way?  You may like it or not.  It ends on kind of an off-note.  No real resolution, but just an awkward balance.  Will things go one way or the other?  How will equilibrium be achieved, or will it be achieved at all?  The filmmakers deliberately leave you in the lurch.  For me, this was unsettling, and I honestly didn't entirely mind it being so.  I like things to be a little different sometimes in stories.  Like the oft-reviled but probably misunderstood ending of the theatrical version of Steven King's The Mist, for instance.  In the case of Gone Girl, I thought the ending fit the weird trip that the movie took at the last third mark.  But others may find it too unsettling to leave things... unsettled.  Especially with such an unsettling movie.

Now that I've wheedled about the plot for more than long enough, a quick stop over on the acting, and we're done.  Affleck, as I've noted before in other reviews, gets a bit of a bad rap.  I realize he has been in some turkey films.  But the guy won't let the world hang the metaphorical dog around his neck and then just live with it.  He keeps doing his thing, and from my experience, the latest outings I've seen him in are all good.  His performance in Gone Girl...  well, Affleck comes off in his own sort of style here, but it doesn't hurt the role in the slightest, I thought.  It can be likened to one of those cases of going to see a movie because you'll see George Clooney in it (see my review on Gravity).  He's always George Clooney-esque, no matter what character he's playing.  But Affleck's spin on the role works perfectly.  You don't know whether he's guilty, or a smuck, or both.  And then later you both sympathize with and deplore him. 

Rosamund Pike, in one of her early film roles starring as Miranda Frost from Die Another Day. / Source: jamesbond.wikia.com

Rosamund Pike...  can't say too much about her without selling the whole thing out.  But here's a lady I never would have imagined could play such a role and be believed in it.  By the end, what is revealed of her and her motives is pretty “out there” stuff.  And she pulls it off.  I really had strong feelings about this gal that Ms. Pike played by the end of the film, and anyone who watches this movie will probably feel likewise.  And the moral of the story, which Pike is a part of, couldn't work unless you could both relate to her and Affleck's characters, and at the same time despise them.  Maybe I've given up too much here.  But really, what you think you believe about the people being detailed in Gone Girl will be shaken by film's end.  To be honest, Gone Girl reminded me of another unexpected "R"-rated trip I took near seventeen or so years ago.  That one was called American Beauty.  If that rings any bells, I'll say Gone Girl is one of those movies.

Final acclaims to both Neil Patrick Harris and Tyler Perry, who both play short but pivotal roles in this thing.  Harris...  well the thing I said earlier about an actor playing a role through the lens of them self (going to see a movie with George Clooney in it, that is)?  Harris puts that on its head.  Here's a guy who started out playing a whiz-kid on a TV series, then later (I lost track of his career until he showed up on TV again) plays a rampantly heterosexual playboy on another TV series - and comes out as being gay sometime around then too, no less - and then in Gone Girl he plays a sort of odd fellow who...  well Harris in Gone Girl was only slightly the Harris you think of from previous work.  Sure, he seems like a bit of an uptight and well off sort, but then... there is a truly subtle darker side to his character, and then his own concluding scenes are... unexpected.  And Perry, who does the high profile wife-slayers' defense lawyer?  Totally relatable.  When he proclaims about the "Miracle on the Missouri" (or was it the Mississippi?  One of those rivers), for the sound bite near the film's conclusion, I totally felt it.

Did I mention that as a young teenager, kids at school used to call me "Doogie Houser"?  I know it was probably more about being "smart," as I was perceived to be in junior high.  But heck,  I wouldn't mind the appelation so much anymore.  Except for the being gay part.  That I can't fathom. / Source: zap2it.com

Gone Girl...  I thought it was worth the Redbox price paid and probably would have paid more for the viewing privilege (cheap sets ticket rate).  Though in retrospect...  I don't know.  This was more like something of an experience, rather than something I would volunteer for.  I say that because of the noted violence, sex, language, and adult themes.  This is a mature film.  Certainly not recommended for youngsters.  And for those old enough to appreciate it?  My review, and keeping the film's ending muddied, may seem like I am recommending it.  But at the same time, I might not have watched it myself if that muddied ending had been clear to me going in.  It's like your first time playing with a jack-in-the-box.  Everything seems clear cut while that handle is being turned, and the tinkling music is playing from inside it.  You know what you're getting.  And then something pops out of the box, and if you aren't ready for it, it could be a bit traumatic.  That's Gone Girl, to me.  A jack-in-the-box.  My recommendation: View accordingly.


The parting comment:

Having just gone to great lengths to not spoil the plot, here is something that will totally spoil the plot.  And its got enough digitally-blurred nudity, gore and violence, and bleeped profanity to earn its own "R" rating.  So don't say I didn't warn you.  But as usual, the folks at Honest Trailers get it right.


Yeah, like totally get a divorce.  Just goes to show that some people really do prefer the hard way.