So let's just get this out of the way, the two stand outs in this movie are Emily Blunt and Allison Janey, whose characters are so deep that I found myself wanting to know them. I wanted to talk to Rachel, and try to walk her through her rough patches and I wanted to have a drink with Detective Riley and talk about her uncanny insights into human nature... or is that vice versa?
That said, when the movie would take you down one of these emotional paths, it would then switch directions because it was obvious to me that the director was trying to break you away from following obvious logical conclusions...that Tom was an abusive husband or that Rachel was actually a recovered alcoholic. I understand why Fincher used this technique (first off, it's his thing anyway, not to go in a linear temporal direction) as it did serve to reveal just enough to take you to the next level. This worked in the storyline but I feel like it cut my emotional ties to the characters. You don't really like some of the other characters until the last 20 minutes of the movie.
At the end of the day you've got a one-dimensional (dead) psychotic ex-husband and a couple of emotionally tortured women he left in his wake. This film almost becomes a "first world problems" type of movie instead of a statement about addiction and emotional abuse... the Housewives of Westchester County and their indiscretions.
Just as an aside, I used to occasionally take the Hudson line and I've known many of the places in this movie from commutes into NYC so there was kind of an appealing nostalgia to it on a personal level.
That said, when the movie would take you down one of these emotional paths, it would then switch directions because it was obvious to me that the director was trying to break you away from following obvious logical conclusions...that Tom was an abusive husband or that Rachel was actually a recovered alcoholic. I understand why Fincher used this technique (first off, it's his thing anyway, not to go in a linear temporal direction) as it did serve to reveal just enough to take you to the next level. This worked in the storyline but I feel like it cut my emotional ties to the characters. You don't really like some of the other characters until the last 20 minutes of the movie.
At the end of the day you've got a one-dimensional (dead) psychotic ex-husband and a couple of emotionally tortured women he left in his wake. This film almost becomes a "first world problems" type of movie instead of a statement about addiction and emotional abuse... the Housewives of Westchester County and their indiscretions.
Just as an aside, I used to occasionally take the Hudson line and I've known many of the places in this movie from commutes into NYC so there was kind of an appealing nostalgia to it on a personal level.