Gillian Flynn’s bestselling novel has become a feverish thriller that has all the emotional subtlety of a Punch and Judy show – but is all the better for it
The knockabout Punch and Judy show undergoes a grand Hollywood upgrade on Gone Girl, a garish, gripping tale of a warring husband and wife that plays like a Relate counsellor’s worst nightmare. The fur flies and the blows are landed, and the smalltown cops are reduced to impotent bystanders. All credit to director David Fincher, who appears to take an unholy delight in tugging the rug and springing the traps.
His film shoves us so forcefully past the plot’s mounting implausibilities that we barely have the time to register one crime before we’re on to the next. That’s the way to do it.
Gone Girl is lifted from Gillian Flynn’s 2012 bestseller, which split its chapters between two unreliable narrators to chart a mysterious disappearance and subsequent media firestorm.
It’s a faithful adaptation of some faithless misbehaviour; a thriller that initially invites us to root for the woman and regard the man as pure evil. And yet if marriage is a mystery, then the truth is in the crossfire. Fingers crossed that it is eventually able to emerge unscathed.
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His film shoves us so forcefully past the plot’s mounting implausibilities that we barely have the time to register one crime before we’re on to the next. That’s the way to do it.
Gone Girl is lifted from Gillian Flynn’s 2012 bestseller, which split its chapters between two unreliable narrators to chart a mysterious disappearance and subsequent media firestorm.
It’s a faithful adaptation of some faithless misbehaviour; a thriller that initially invites us to root for the woman and regard the man as pure evil. And yet if marriage is a mystery, then the truth is in the crossfire. Fingers crossed that it is eventually able to emerge unscathed.
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