Like Gillian Flynn's best-selling 2012 novel of the same name, "Gone Girl" relies on the careful, methodic unpeeling of its many intentionally cagey layers. Said layers, however, do not hold quite the same complexity in cinematic form, with Flynn (as screenwriter) streamlining and dulling the edges of her lead couple's motivations. The story of a toxic marriage inside a jigsaw puzzle of interlocking pieces that prove revelatory once connected, the film is first and foremost set up as a mystery about a missing, quite possibly murdered, person. Director David Fincher (2011's "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo") gives each of his pictures a locational specificity and brooding trance-like style all its own, and it is by his sheer filmmaking bravado and the superlative work of his actors that "Gone Girl" ensures the viewer keeps watching and (if he or she hasn't read the book) guessing. It is only in hindsight, after all is said and done, that some of the parts don't quite add up to a satisfying whole. For a movie that relies so heavily on the filmic equivalent of a magic trick, will there really be enough substance to hang onto—and buy into—during repeat viewings?
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