All Good Things

Despite a chilling performance from Ryan Gosling and strong supporting efforts from Kirsten Dunst and Frank Langella, All Good Things, which is loosely based on a real-life missing-persons case, just doesn't coalesce successfully as a satisfying murder mystery. In this non-documentary directorial debut of Andrew Jarecki, Gosling plays the increasingly unstable David Marks, an heir to a family fortune, complete with certifiably crazy talking-to-himself moments. After abandoning his dream of owning a health-food store in Vermont with his new wife, Katie (Dunst, in a complex and emotive turn), he returns to New York to work for his real-estate-mogul father, Sanford, commandingly portrayed by Langella. While avoiding spoilers, it's safe to say that this sets something off in Marks' psyche, and he becomes abusive towards Katie. Though he certainly has issues stemming from his dysfunctional family—Marks witnessed his mother's suicide—this explanation for his actions comes across as a superficial copout. Jarecki's previous film, Capturing the Friedmans, was effective precisely because it left its conclusion ambiguous for the viewer, but, in All Good Things, Jarecki seems compelled to make a judgment call on what may have happened to the story's many victims, and the result is muddled. The movie starts down many roads to explain the violence surrounding the characters, yet leaves the paths only partially traversed.