"This film achieves very, very little..."

After the success of Mean Girls and Mamma Mia! few would have expected Amanda Seyfried to turn her talents to action thrillers, yet with the recently released In Time and now with Gone, she has started to fancy herself with a gun - and in fairness, she's managing to pull it off.

Seyfried plays Jill, living with her sister Molly (Emily Wickersham), and still haunted by her unsolved abduction which took place a couple of years previous. Yet one day when returning home from work she realises her sister isn't in, and she instantly knows that the man who kidnapped her has come back for her sister.

Jill goes straight to the police, yet their suspicions of lunacy lead to them showing little interest in Molly's case as they are of the belief that Jill had imagined her previous kidnapping and is suffering from a mental illness. However, Jill doesn't give up her case and searching for the man she believes to have Molly, with the police on her back attempting to halt her pursuit.

Brazilian director Heitor Dhalia has presented a picture full of suspense, evidently building towards a dramatic finale, as we try to comprehend whether Molly has in fact been kidnapped, or whether Jill is inventing the entire thing up. In that respect it keeps you guessing throughout, and is certainly engaging and if approached in the right mindset is quite good fun.

Although on Jill's quest much of her investigative work feels somewhat contrived. Certain bits of information come far too easily to her, and therefore feels unnatural and too false. For example, she discovers the kidnappers address and car model and mileage from a shopkeeper who had sold him cello tape. God knows how that conversation came about.

However the feature's greatest misgiving is that the ending is hugely anticlimactic. For a film that is distinctly working towards its grand conclusion, it manages to get it all wrong, leading to a sense of   dissatisfaction, as this film achieves very, very little. 

In fairness, what came before the ending is enjoying and Seyfried puts in an impressive performance, playing the action role very well. It's a testament to her performance that you stick with the plot and remain compelled right up until the very end. However, she is the only character really delved into, as there is little depth to those around her in the supporting roles. From the policemen to the kidnapper to her sister and friends, they are all relatively small roles and Jill is definitely in need of more interesting and substantial characters to feed off, even if her mental instability remains intriguing.

Gone is simply a generic thriller, with the occasional gripping scene whilst remaining fast paced throughout - yet it bears a disappointing ending. Usually such an anticlimactic finale can be forgiven somewhat if the feature was fascinatingly good previous to that, but unfortunately for Dhalia its initial mediocrity helps in making this film all too forgettable and not one worth seeing again.