The film starts off with Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) waking up on his five year anniversary to his wife Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike). He is stressed and decides to start off his character development by going to "The Bar" that he and his twin sister own. He takes a few shots of whiskey while reminiscing the past with his twin sister (Carrie Coon) wishing his life could be more stable. He eventually travels back to his house he woke up in, only to see a broken glass coffee table tipped over and that his wife has suddenly disappeared. He calls the police and immediately enters a Detective (Kim Dickens) and a Police Officer (Patrick Fugit) to investigate the home of Nick's to come up with a scenario in what could have happened.
Gillian Flynn (who also wrote the novel) knows not to waste the audiences time in getting straight down to the plot everyone came to see, but without leaving any details unexplained. It quickly escalates when the detective and her team of investigators find more clues that leads them to list Nick as a suspect of possibly killing his wife. The news quickly makes assumptions from whatever clues the police disclose, and end up pointing fingers at Nick, trying to make it seem like he's definitely guilty. That's where Fincher's middle fingers are pretty much pointed at the media from his director's chair. He's taking talk shows from Fox News and other unreliable resources and exposing them for their quick assumptions to a scenario they know nothing about. That leads to Nick eventually having to hire a famous expensive lawyer (played surprisingly well by Tyler Perry) to help defend him against the media by trying to play out the "nice and innocent" in his character to get the public on his side to avoid possible arrest and possible sentence. Meanwhile, Nick is ALSO trying to investigate clues of his own on the disappearance of his wife while trying to avoid the police detectives to see if he can prove his own innocence. All that struggle he goes through is what makes the movie fun and exciting from start to finish.
I've only given you 30% of the plot by the way, because the rest I can't even talk about. The writing and direction is so clever at moving the story along so fast that the twists in this movie will hit you when you don't see them coming. There are LOTS of characters in this movie that I can't even talk about because it could possibly spoil the movie for you. I will say though that Neil Patrick Harris' character is very important to the story and isn't just some brief cameo like you see in a lot of movies. David Fincher uses every actor only as much as is necessary to the plot. Not to mention, EVERY actor in this movie is phenomenal. Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike are major contenders for awards season as much as Gillian Flynn's brilliant but gut wrenching script. Two more performances to keep an eye on as well are Carrie Coon and Kim Dickens especially.
David Fincher gets better and better EVERY time he does a new project. He challenges himself with the tone he decides to go with and the actors he decides to cast. It's safe to say that this is easily his darkest movie by far; not to mention most plot twist driven as well. This is the kind of movie I look for when I hear about an upcoming David Fincher project. He makes this two and a half hour movie seem like only 90 minutes. He doesn't waste a single bit of detail description in the foreground or background of his shots. He of course already knows to do so when he hires his same cinematographer, editor, sound editor and music orchestrator. This is easily one of the best films he's ever done and I'm happy to recommend it to everyone I know with this article and rating below.
****
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