THRILLER; 2hr 29min
STARRING: Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike
Love. Sick. Affleck (with a poster of Pike)
Five years after their starry beginnings in New York City, golden couple Nick and Amy Dunne (Affleck and Pike) are sorely tarnished. Their recession-driven shift to Nick’s home town of North Carthage, Missouri, has worked against them: magazine journalist Nick now owns and runs a bar with his twin sister, Margo (Carrie Coon), and broods over his eroded marriage while his educated, intuitive wife does God-knows-what to fill her days. Then, on the morning of their anniversary, Amy vanishes from their upscale home.
With the zealous police investigation and concurrent search kicking into a national media witch-hunt, Nick, already rattled and no angel besides, feels the sting of suspicion as Gillian Flynn’s cannily ambiguous screenplay of her sensational 2012 book escalates into a maze of layers. Even if you’ve already read the novel and know the head-spinning depths into which this will plummet, director David Fincher’s drum-tight treatment is utterly addictive from go to all-out woe. The cast holds steady through every treacherous turn, with Affleck full steam in a shaded performance (Is he? Isn’t he? Did he? Didn’t he? ) and Pike a Russian nesting doll of disturbing revelations.
