Battle of the sexes in David Fincher’s twisted thriller

AFFLECK AND PIKE. He said, she said scenario.

Is Ben Affleck hero or heel? The 42-year-old actor finds himself dragged into a murder investigation when Nick Dunne, his character in David Fincher’s compelling thriller, “Gone Girl,” comes home on the day of his fifth wedding anniversary and realizes that his wife, Amy (Rosamund Pike), has gone missing.

Nick insists he’s innocent of his wife’s apparent murder, but his seeming lack of genuine empathy turns him into the sociopathic suspect the media loves to conveniently cast stones at. If you’re on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, you know that one careless shout-out is enough to get you “trendingly” demonized long before you’re proven innocent.

If you go by public perception, however, it does seem like Nick has long been veering dangerously off-course from his ideal persona as a hot-to-trot journalist who marries the cool chick with a prodigious past as a writer. But, this being a Fincher flick, you know that things aren’t always what they seem.

The couple’s deceptively “ideal” marriage begins to come undone when they both lose their dream jobs as a result of recession. Tension escalates when they relocate to suburban Missouri, and Amy is taken out of her sheltered upbringing in New York.

The situation degenerates further when she finds out about her husband’s year-long affair—with a teenage student! Worse, he doesn’t even know his unhappy wife was pregnant when she went missing! Will the retrieval of Amy’s missing diary bring answers—or is it just another red herring planted to “prove” the guilt of her duplicitous husband?

True, Nick’s infidelity is beyond question—but, does that make him guilty of murder? And, what has Amy’s wealthy but strange ex-boyfriend, Desi Collings (Neil Patrick Harris), got to do with the shocking turn of events? —Where are Bruce Wayne and his crime-solving skills when you need them most?

With his mastery at bare-knuckle yarn-spinning, Fincher reveals the unsettling answers as he takes turns following his leads’ dissenting and contradictory perspectives in nonlinear fashion—a “he said, she said” scenario that launches the protagonists’ twisted but stylishly realized battle of the sexes.

Affleck and the scalding-hot Pike deliver knockout portrayals as they spar for survival in Fincher’s thespic ring. They don’t always come off as likable characters, but their uncluttered and unadulterated characterizations knock the wind out of cynics’ sails.

By weighing in on the shifting dynamics of the couple’s wobbly relationship, the film, which is based on novelist-screenwriter Gillian Flynn’s book, opens up a Pandora’s Box of alarming issues, and sets off a series of thrilling situations that leaves viewers on the edge of their seats.

The film’s “adjusted” ending feels insufficient, but it otherwise entertains as much as it engages with its brutal honesty and frank depiction of domestic violence in its many distressing shades!