Friday 20 April 2012

"Gone" (The Guardian 20/04/12)

Gone (15) ***

This surprisingly watchable multiplex filler casts Amanda Seyfried as a sort of hyper-neurotic Nancy Drew: a waitress rattling round on antidepressants after the trauma of an unsolved (and unproven) kidnap attempt who returns home one day to find her alcoholic sister has vanished in similar circumstances. Forced into playing detective, her capacity for spinning tall tales to elicit the info she needs sets us to wonder if there isn’t something in the APB the authorities have out on her as a lunatic with a handgun; on the Seyfried Spaciness Index, we’re poised very nicely between Mean Girls and the full Chloe. Allison Burnett’s screenplay parcels out brisk character notes with its twists, while Brazilian director Heitor Dhalia – taking the Hollywood coin after his arthouse breakthrough Adrift – seeks out Portland locations that prove almost as colourfully fertile as our heroine’s imagination. It’s daffy, but it works.

Gone opens in cinemas nationwide today.

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