By Pete “Pops” Killip.

Looking for a challenging date-movie this week? Been a while since you’ve seen Ben Affleck put in the kind of cold, dead-eyed performance usually reserved for interviewers asking about his “Gigli” days? David Fincher has a little something for you.

Everybody and their dog read the guilty pleasure from Gillian Flynn’s fevered imaginings and had an opinion on the somewhat unreliable narrative and THAT twist. Once cinema’s angry son, David Fincher was no different and after adapting “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” in 2011, was no stranger to trashy holiday reads that took on a life of their own either.

That Fincher has remained steadfast and true to the source material but still kept to his own leanings of social schizophrenia, black humour and beautiful visual flourishes should be lauded.

Taking in all the hallowed background of the book and feeling like a shot-for-shot re-hash would be an easy enough exercise but happily, in Fincher we trust and it’s more a pulpy pot-boiler piggybacking on a backdrop of the fallen economy and decline of journalism. The glacial beauty of Rosamund  Pike, here working perfectly as, like her husband Nick, we’re  never completely sure what is going on with her, a measured and conversely fractured performance ,that come Oscar season, hopefully they’ll show “Amazing Amy” some love.

Another home-run for team Fincher then, never a chore to see him at work, just makes me yearn for him to put down the holiday reading and pick up an original script, let’s feel the angry son’s heat again.

4.5/5