Gone Girl cut for UAE cinemas but story does not suffer

How much has been cut from Gone Girl to make suitable for UAE cinemas? Is it still worth going to watch it ? We investigate.

Ben Affleck stars as Nick Dunne in Gone Girl. 20th Century Fox
Powered by automated translation

So the biggest release of the weekend hit cinema screens on Thursday, and the question on movie fans' lips across the country was: "Will it be worth going to see?" David Fincher's critically lauded Gone Girl has been a hit all over the world, holding the number-one spot in the United Kingdom and United States, and no one has been questioning the quality of the film.

There is a small catch for regional audiences. Fincher’s dark thriller about a dysfunctional married couple (Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike), and the wife’s mysterious disappearance, has a lot of vital narrative that unfolds during scenes involving sex and nudity.

Regional audiences left wary after The Wolf of Wall Street experience this year – 45 minutes were slashed from Martin Scorsese's biopic of the Wall Street fraudster Jordan Belfort – were left wondering whether this would be another one to avoid once it had been edited for local audiences. Having seen both the uncut and cut versions, I'm pleased to report that a gold star is in order for the distributor Empire Films, which has handled the editing process in a sensitive, responsible manner.

Cuts have been made, but the one major scene close to the end I was particularly concerned about does remain comprehensible. There is a very abrupt, almost comical cut which will probably elicit chuckles for its jarring nature, but the crucial part we need to see remains, if a little disjointed, and the ending certainly makes sense.

The distributor has even been fairly creative with the editing – a habit that I hope catches on in a region where there’s a tendency to cut whole scenes rather than look at ways they might be retained in a different manner.

One scene towards the end of the film, where the unfolding helplessness of Nick's position is laid bare, takes place with both lead characters in the shower. You suspect if The Wolf of Wall Street's editors had been let loose on it that would be another couple of minutes on the cutting-room floor. Here, however, the editors have simply zoomed in on the characters' faces. It's that easy. The entire dialogue remains intact and if I'm honest I didn't feel it lost anything by being spoken without Affleck's rippling abs in full view.

A quick straw poll of viewers seemed to suggest opinion was generally favourable.