'Gone Girl': The First Reviews Are In — and Ben Affleck is Getting a Lot of Love

While Ben Affleck’s reputation as a director is unimpeachable, his acting career never fully recovered from early-‘00s stumbles like Daredevil and Gigli. That may change with David Fincher’s highly anticipated thriller Gone Girl (opening October 3).The first reviews of are in, and they’re largely glowing, with many of the critics heaping praise on the performances of Affleck and his co-star Rosamund Pike.

Based on the bestselling mystery novel by Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl tells the story of writer Nick Dunne (Affleck), who is blamed for the sudden disappearance of his wife Amy (Pike). It’s a searing portrait of marriage, as the twists and turns take the audience into the dark heart of a seemingly perfect relationship. Fincher has said that he cast Affleck as Nick because of his smile in press photos, which perhaps seemed like he was trying to telegraph something he didn’t really feel. “You look at [those photos] and know he’s trying to make people comfortable in the moment, but by doing that he’s making himself vulnerable to people having other perceptions about him,” Fincher said of his star. As proof of Fincher’s excellent casting instincts, here’s what critics are saying about Affleck’s performance.

“Nick [is] brilliantly played by Ben Affleck as a man who has finally realized his life will never quite live up to the promise of his jawline.” – The Telegraph

“Affleck has done some of his finest screen work playing men of power and privilege suddenly brought low by fate (George Reeves in Hollywoodland, a laid-off executive in The Company Men), and he’s perfectly cast as Nick Dunne, bringing just the right golden-boy-gone-to-seed air to a character who is slowly deprived of his dignity and privacy, inch by cruel inch. Often unfairly criticized early in his career for seeming smug, vain and inauthentic onscreen, Affleck is uniquely suited to the role of a man facing those very charges from a fickle and demanding public; it’s a tricky turn, requiring a measure of careful underplaying and emotional aloofness, and he nails it completely.” – Variety

“I never thought I’d write these words, but [Affleck] carries the movie. He’s terrific.” - Vulture

“Affleck, who has never been more ideally cast, delivers a beautiful balancing act of a performance, fostering both sympathy and the suspicion that his true self lies somewhere between shallow jerk and heartless murderer.” – The Hollywood Reporter

Pike is receiving similar raves for her turn as the complex Amy Dunne, the “gone girl” of the title, which Variety calls “the showiest, most substantial role of her career.” The early reviews also reveal that the film’s ending, which was the subject of much speculation, remains essentially unchanged from the novel.

Gone Girl opens in theaters nationwide on Oct. 3