Who's Worth Your Trust In Fincher's Moody, Atmospheric 'Gone Girl'? : NPR

Who's Worth Your Trust In Fincher's Moody, Atmospheric 'Gone Girl'? : NPR:

David Fincher's marital thriller, Gone Girl, is based on a 2-year-old novel that spent more than 71 weeks on the New York Times hardcover best-seller list, and sold more than 6 million copies before it even came out in paperback. So a lot of suspense fans already know its twists and turns.

But that doesn't mean spoilers are OK, and because this review was written principally for radio (and my producers won't allow me to urge listeners who want to stay in the dark about plot points to turn down their radios), I'm going to have to be especially circumspect. And that's frustrating, because the film will almost certainly raise hackles in some quarters over issues that track closely with recent headlines, that surface late in the story, and that I can't even bring up without being accused of giving the game away.

Happily, I can point you to a thorough and engaging discussion of those issues right here on NPR.org. Pop culture blogger Linda Holmes has written two entirely separate — and separately clever — Monkey See pieces: one for folks who want to be surprised by the movie, and one for folks who've read the book and want to dive in deeper. I strongly urge you to dive in deeper once you've seen the movie. In the meantime, though, I'm going to have to stay in the shallow end.

So, what can I tell you? Well, even if you haven't read the book, you'll likely have heard thatGone Girl's story — of a wife who abruptly goes missing from what appears to be a happy home — uses the "unreliable narrator" literary device. But in a movie, who would that be, exactly? Ben Affleck's Nick, a self-styled "corn-fed, salt-of-the-earth Missouri boy"? Or Rosamund Pike's Amy, his classy East Coast wife, whose youth inspired a series of "Amazing Amy" children's books?

One thing's for sure: When they meet cute at a New York party — a happy event as it's recounted in a flashback — they appear both well-matched and playful, Amy offering up a multiple-choice answer when Nick asks who she is, and Nick saying to her similar query that he's the guy who'll save her from "all this awesomeness."