There are a lot of similarities between David Fincher's
Gone Girl and Dan Gilroy's
Nightcrawler: both star a career-best performance by their A-list leading man, both are a dark, twisted tale brought on by a sociopath, and both are a scathing satire on the relationship Americans have with the media. The only difference is that
Gone Girl is directed by an experienced director with a rookie screenwriter, whereas
Nightcrawler is directed by a first-time director with a veteran screenwriter. While we like to think as movies as the director's forum (whereas TV is the writer's playground), the reality is that if you do not have a great, or even good script, there's nothing even the best directors can do to tell a masterful story.
That's the main problem with
Gone Girl. While David Fincher is at his best in his latest film, and he probably does some of the best directing work of his career,
Gone Girl is just an average movie. There's nothing that Fincher could have done to save Gillian Flynn's script, and in fact, Flynn's script in the hands of almost every other director is a flat out bad movie. It is not that Flynn is a bad screenwriter, it's that her original story (Flynn also wrote the book
Gone Girl) is so bonkers, bat-shit crazy that I'm surprised it ever became popular enough as a book to get Hollywood's attention.
You can read my full review of Gone Girl here.
