Gone Girl, Film Review. Picturehouse@F.A.C.T, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, Neil Patrick Harris, Tyler Perry, Carrie Coon, Kim Dickens, Patrick Fugit, Casey Wilson, Missi Pyle, Sela Ward, Emily Ratajkowski, Kathleen Rose Perkins, Lisa Banes, David Clennon, Scoot McNairy, Boyd Holbrook, Lola Kirke, Cyd Strittmatter, Leonard Kelly-Young.

The female of the species is more deadly than the male, when it comes to Amy Elliott-Dunne, you don’t get much more deadly, you don’t feel the need more to make sure you never meet someone like them for if you do, you will be devoured, spat out and left to rot and it will be all blamed upon you.

Gone Girl is the film adaption of the 2012 novel by Gillian Flynn, also adapted by Ms. Flynn, a tale of mistrust, misdirection and of murder. The death of an innocent and the exposure of a nation’s hate towards one person becomes sickeningly fatalistic and it is a film in which you cannot take your eyes away from for one single minute for the story line is just outstanding.

If Gone Girl should be looked upon in later years as Ms. Pike absolute crowning glory in film then as the finest cinematic female psychopath of all time is arguably the best way to achieve the position and glory that goes with it. Forget Sharon Stone and Jeanne Tripplehorn in Basic Instinct or Jennifer Jason Leigh’s Hedy Carlson in Single White Female, it pales into comparison when placed upon this magnificent script. Perhaps unfairly Ms. Pike had so much going against her when she first came to the vast majority of cinema-goers attention when she was cast at such a young age in the Bond franchise film Die Another Day, in arguably the worst of Pierce Brosnan’s films as the suave sophisticated secret agent. In many people’s minds it could be said, the film was one of the worst in the series for two decades and it is unfortunate that Ms. Pike’s career should include being in the credits of that film.

In Gone Girl, this is a woman who can chill your blood just by waving and suggestively smiling at you as she is answering detective’s questions. The fear that one feels creeping down the back as if a Tarantula had found your sunbathing body a tantalising prospect, as you sit back and take in such a consummate performance is one worthy of being bestowed a nomination for an Oscar in 2015. When you can feel the nervousness filter from everybody beside you in the cinema, the small droplets of scared for your life desire oozing from the back row and making itself comfortable as it nestles into your domestic nightmares, then you know you have met your ultimate date nightmare; woe betide you should ever meet someone like it.

Ben Affleck gives a fine supporting role to Ms. Pike, as does Tyler Perry as Tanner Bolt, Nick Dunne’s Lawyer,  the marvellous Carrie Coon excels in her mental anguish as Ben Affleck’s twin sister, but it should be added that no matter how good these particular performances are, the glue of the film is held in Rosamund Pike’s British hands.

If Gone Girl should be held up as an example to anything it is to the way it openly shows how the media in the 21st Century can so easily manipulate public opinion, can easily sway the so called masses into a frenzy of worship and adulation and then with careful pointers, with the skill of a surgeon operating on the most delicate of brain procedures, the hounding of a person can become like a national epidemic, a disease in which there is no cure and the only victor is television ratings. Trial by jury may have its detractors but would you rather trust your soul to 12 people good and true or to the media who chase the cash cow to the death.

The media can be a force for good but at times shows itself to be as bad as the perpetrators of the most hideous of crimes. It is on a par with some people’s attitude to notoriety, the scene in which a woman somehow wheedles her way in to a conversation and gets an off moment picture with Nick is a warning to all that in this day and age you just never know who wants you for what reason.

The female of the species is certainly more dangerous than the male, be careful who you marry and befriend.

Ian D. Hall