"Nick" (Ben Affleck) is seemingly happily married to the gorgeous and witty "Amy" (Rosamund Pike) until he comes home one evening and finds a smashed table and no wife. The cops turn up with "Boney" (Kim Dickens) and "Gilpin" (Patrick Fugit) soon smelling a rat. Together with her parents, they do all the usual publicity stuff but to no avail. Then the police start to wonder if he's telling the truth, and that suspicion is only heightened when they discover some deliberately left breadcrumbs that begin to suggest that he is a bit of a cheating brute and that she was terrified he was going to kill her. As evidence mounts, you wouldn't put your money on "Nick" so with the support of his no-nonsense sister "Margo" (Carrie Coon) he engages acclaimed lawyer "Bolt" (Tyler Perry) and they start digging. They are ill-prepared for the truth that they actually do discover, though not as ill-prepared as "Collings" (Neil Patrick Harris). As we learn more about who did or didn't do what to whom, we find ourselves immersed in quite an complex web of lies, deceit and downright evil. For my money, this is Affleck's best film as his character has more skin in the game and as the tension mounts he sweats the story for all it's worth. Pike is also on great form as the fiendish "Amy" who is perfectly capable of manipulation on a fairly grand scale. There are also quite a revealing series of cameos from Reece Witherspoon's television chat show host who's motto ought to be "never let the truth get in the way..." The self-adaptation of her novel allows both Gillian Flynn and David Fincher to squeeze the juice from an ensemble cast that play to just about every toxic form of sexist stereotype the media can concoct and peddle. To be honest, I didn't love the denouement. Somehow I felt it let this whole carefully plotted and crafted exercise down a bit, but for the preceding 2½ hours it really does hold your attention.
