Pretty Gone.

In a week where Sky News, internet trolls, the McCanns, professional pantomime villainess Katie Hopkins and self righteous journalists converged in a twitter storm of news making news about the news (instead of reporting it) - 'Gone Girl' makes perfect sense as a black comedy for our social media/news-bite times.

I'm not sure many people will find it funny and certainly the marketing people don't want you thinking that this is anything other than a mystery thriller. But in the same way that I thought 'Maps To The Stars' was Cronenberg's black comedy I suspect that this is David Fincher's way of having a laugh. It's a battle of the sexes comedy disguised as psychological nightmare. There are intentionally funny lines, deliberate barbs at trial-by-TV reporting, dark twisted asides on marriage and a farcical ending that, though played straight, gets funnier the more you think about it. All of which means there's a lot more going on than in last months similar but dull "Before I Go To Sleep'.

It's probably half an hour too long, but it is worthy of your time and so I'm going to try and keep this spoiler free for you.

The film is constructed like a a bizarre game of consequences and can be sliced into three parts. Part one, the "He Said" part, sees events primarily through Nick Dunne's eyes (Ben Affleck) as he reports his wife missing, attempts to cope with the media circus, the police intrusion and piece together what went wrong. The second "She Said" part focuses on Amy's (Rosamund Pike) perspective. The final third lets the "consequences" play out. It is a clever plot and you can see why it became a runaway bestseller. I haven't read the book but I know it relies on the literary device of unreliable narration, which is preserved fairly well in the film. I started off hating Nick, then quite liking him, then being unsure of him. Both of the main protagonists seem complex, flawed and real. We can't be certain about either of them and therein lies the tension.

David Fincher is of course the king of the thinking person's serial killer movie ('Se7en', 'Zodiac' and 'The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo') and as you would expect this film is smeared in green/blue hues, is heavy on detail and beautifully shot. It combines the long, talky but cinematic dialogue scenes retained from his work on 'The Social Network' with the more visceral set pieces à la 'Fight Club' and 'Panic Room'. In short, it distills the best elements of his work and leaves us with a thoroughly entertaining two and a half hours.

Ben Affleck is a divisive actor, which actually makes this a canny piece of casting. I don't have a problem with him at all and think he is top notch in this. Rosamund Pike is a revelation. She knows she has the role of a lifetime here and fucking runs with it. There must be a long line of A-list actresses who wanted this part. Pike more than steps up to the challenge. The film is produced by Reese Witherspoon's company and it's easy to speculate that this may have been developed as a project to showcase her own talents. Whatever, Rosamund Pike is perfect in the role and will be in demand after this. The supporting cast is excellent too, with more strong parts for women. Nick's sister played by Carrie Coon and the female detective played by Kim Dickens are fabulous in what could have been perfunctory roles. The only false note here I thought was Neil "Doogie Houser" Patrick Harris who is deliberately cast against type, but jarringly so, to the extent that you become so aware of it that it takes you out of the movie for a bit.

The music score by Trent Reznor/Atticus Ross is unobtrusive but effective and marks a welcome respite from the slashing string section score that usual accompanies films like this.

I suspect a lot of people will be disappointed by the ending and if you're the sort of person who likes to pick holes in plots you will be in your element. The resolution is undeniably ludicrous and doesn't ring psychologically true at all but that's sort of the point. There's something deeper, darker and funnier going on here. If you can dig out the humour you'll find a lot to enjoy. For me the film does shift in tone considerably but it is very subtle and I appreciated that Fincher was trying to do something different within the genre. I liked it a lot. Go see it.