The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Reviews

If you haven't seen the Swedish version of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," the American remake should please you. If you have seen the original and decide to take in director David Fincher's copy- excuse me, "reimagining," prepare for déjà vu.

A year ago, I saw the Coen brothers' update of "True Grit." I enjoyed the new film, but it was a peculiar experience because - aside from new actors - I felt as though I was watching the 1969 John Wayne classic verbatim. I had that same feeling as I watched Fincher's much-hyped thriller. Fincher gets a lot of things right in adapting Stieg Larsson's novel: the wintry sterility of Swedish landscapes; casting the perfect actress to play the enigmatic Lisbeth Salander. But Danish director Niels Arden Oplev also got those things right in his 2009 original.

Oplev and Fincher both do some tweaking of Larsson's plot, but they've essentially made the same film. What made the first movie stand out was the chemistry between leads Michael Nyqvist and Noomi Rapace. Rapace, especially, made a strong impression as Salander, the goth-girl computer hacker who helps track down a serial killer. In the new film, Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara also strike sparks. But as the adage goes, the first time is always the best, and I prefer the Swedes.

Fincher is my favorite currently working American director. He deals with dark subject matter, and always puts a personal stamp on his projects. So this movie surprises me, because it hasn't a drop of originality. It isn't bad, mind you, just unnecessary.

Expanded Review At: Grouchyeditor.com

As we should’ve all gathered about now, remakes and second adaptations from another film/novel have proved themselves as massive gambles that have become either a huge success (e.g. The Departed, King Kong, Scarface) or a huge disappointment (Psycho, A Nightmare On Elm Street, Planet Of The Apes). Although the Swedish version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo was released in 2009, the idea of a second film adaptation but in English after only two years was a rather unorthodox and unusual one as it ultimately became quite a shock. However, when it came to our attention that David Fincher was selected as director, the anticipation to watch it began to build and expectations were high. Amazingly, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo overcame all obstacles and made itself worthy as one of the best films of 2011 and re-lives the brilliance of the 2009 Swedish version.


There are certain arguments debating about whether this English language version is even a remake at all due to opposing languages with different actors and crew members despite being a second adaptation. Nevertheless, from a personal perspective, this version is not a remake of the 2009 Swedish film but it is re-living the source of both films and it takes you to yet another different level. In addition, this version has perhaps enhanced its viewers to watch the other adaptation to gain an understanding and an outlook of what to expect in this one, although it’s not really essential which one you select to watch first because they mutually provide the exact same emotional feelings from one another.


During the early stages of his career, David Fincher has provided us with many dark thrillers that include Alien 3, Seven, The Game, Fight Club, Panic Room and Zodiac, but has provided us with other fantastic dramas The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button and The Social Network. However, as far as this is concerned, it is the exact film that only Fincher could pull off (in English language, at least) due to the fact that he simply ventured back to the drama and thriller genres that he has been famously recognised for and has merged them together, which is what we have with The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Actually, his attention to detail is a very similar style to what the late Stanley Kubrick did in the past. Fincher provides us with a film that somehow manages to not take all of the credit from Niels Arden Oplev, director of the Swedish version, and all the other crew members as the English language version pulls off the exact concepts that we saw previously. Screenwriter Steve Zaillian has worked alongside directors from the likes of Steven Spielberg, Ridley Scott, Brian De Palma and Martin Scorsese where he has written some of the most creative and extremely powerful scripts of the past 20 years. After already co-writing 2011 film Moneyball, he works alongside David Fincher as he somehow improvises and, like Fincher, doesn’t necessarily steal any of the aspects in the previous version. In fact, it wasn’t Fincher and Zaillian adjusting the story and its concepts to fit in with its target audience, it was altering the actors and crew members into the Scandinavian neighbourhood and feeling like a re-birth of the book.


Quite honestly, to be able to come close or to even surpass Noomi Rapace’s outstanding performance as Lisbeth Salander would be a very difficult task for any actress to be able to pull off, especially in a different language. Out of the numerous number of candidates for the role, Rooney Mara (who had previously worked with Fincher in The Social Network) gives a performance that fits almost every specific aspect of Rapace’s Salander that literally makes Mara’s role neither worse nor better than Rapace’s. Mara adds one very slight adjustment to Lisbeth Salander’s character that Rapace didn’t: a sense of innocence. Noomi Rapace was a slightly darker Salander but they were both equally as fantastic as each other. Mara rightfully deserves an Academy Award nomination for Best Leading Actress and if she does receive one, it will perhaps justify Noomi Rapace not receiving one seeing as she was robbed.


Alongside Daniel Craig, fellow actors Viggo Mortensen, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp were battling it out for the leading role of Mikael Blomkvist, and as good as the other actors would have been in the role, Craig provides a role that is only for him (in the English language, of course) but isn’t quite an Oscar worthy performance. We all recognise him as James Bond now and personal thoughts about him being in this film were mixed to begin with and he actually became a surprise as he provides an equally sensational performance as Michael Nyqvist in the role of Blomkvist. Although Max Von Sydow, a famous Swedish Hollywood actor, was the favourite to star in the film as Henrik Vanger, veteran actor Christopher Plummer replaced him and provides another brilliant performance! Plummer illustrates perfectly the lonely, depressed and rather desperate grandfather that Henrik really is. Stellan Skarsgård, who has portrayed good supporting heroes and villains over the years, makes his mark and gives a performance to remember as well. There are other brief appearances from other actors Steven Berkoff, Robin Wright, Joely Richardson and Embeth Davidtz also.


Overall, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo became both a huge surprise yet at the same time became something that was rather expected from Fincher as this English language version is neither better nor worse than the Swedish version. Also, there are a few twists and turns that we didn’t see before, so there are a few minor surprises in store. After how this turned out despite the rather crazy idea to begin with and they could not get any better than this one, the other two sequels in the trilogy don’t necessarily have to be made. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo has become yet another triumph for David Fincher featuring filmmaking at its finest, fantastic performances (especially from Mara) and an innovative script that would make the late author Stieg Larsson proud.

"I want you to help me catch a killer of women" Based on the best selling book "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" never lets you breathe. The movie takes you from beginning to end without letting you get comfortable. It engages you in every scene, and makes you guess. An edge of your seat thriller that doesn't let up.

David Fincher creates once again a dark scene. Like Se7en and Fight Club, David Fincher directs a gem in this one. Fincher is one of those directors who creates such great shots in every scene. He once again does not dissapoints



Rooney Mara, Rooney Mara is the only name you need to know at the end of this movie. She was dark, a smart ass, and twisted. Rooney stole the show with every scene she was in. Rooney is unrecognizable in her role as Lisbeth Salander. A nomination for an Oscar is in her sights and better be. Daniel Craig was great, and not laughable as most critics said. Plus Stellan Skarsgard was probably the best supporter of the movie.



Don't skip this, this is high in my recommendations. It's not for teens though, there is a lot of talking, which drives the movie, which has a very strong screenplay. Maybe Trent Reznor's score will keep them interested. Rooney Mara is a gem and the story develops brilliantly. See it now!

The title character in David Fincher's latest cinematic venture is a ferociously dark soul, a hellishly badass girl down to the very core of her being. She's also savagely intelligent and resourceful, a computer whiz who can literally hack into anything whenever she wants to, but even worse, if she finds out something about you or if you pose any sort of threat to her, you're in for nothing but pain and agony. And she WILL find you. This is one of the most fascinating characters I've had the admittedly perverse pleasure of meeting at the movies in 2011. What a shame it is that the context in which we get to meet her is that of a murder mystery that, despite being stylish and despite having a running time of 2 hours and 38 minutes, is as interesting as the murder mystery you'd encounter in your average police procedural on primetime television. If The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo had truly been a story ABOUT this girl with a dragon tattoo, if the film had delved deeply into her background, and if it had given us more than the superficial look that we get here at her harsh life and at her sexuality, we'd have a hell of a story, one that I'm confident Fincher could've turned into a cinematic gem. But the film follows the source material, which actually relegates a character as amazing as Lisbeth into an almost secondary role, and it focuses on a story that's engrossing enough but way too far from the dark character study this could've been.

You see, Lisbeth (Rooney Mara) works as a researcher for a company that's in charge of basically finding out people's dirty laundry. She's their best investigator, but they try to keep her a secret, because she's what many would call unorthodox, sporting a totally gothic look with piercings in different places on her face. So, rather than working at the office, she does all her sleuthing and hacking at home, and only goes to the office when necessary. We soon find out that Lisbeth had a really difficult childhood and that she was institutionalized at one point, so she has a legal guardian who's in charge of her. Apparently, her legal guardian had a great relationship with her and was even nice enough to let Lisbeth handle her own finances, but when he suffers a stroke, Lisbeth is assigned a new guardian... and well... it'd be an understatement to say that, this time, Lisbeth isn't as lucky - and that's as much as I'll reveal, considering the fact that the dynamics of what goes on between Lisbeth and her new guardian offer the film's most searing and audacious material. Later on, Lisbeth's skills garner her an offer to work as an assistant for Mikael (Daniel Craig), an investigative journalist, to help solve the apparent murder of a girl named Harriet Vanger who's been missing for decades. The crime took place on a remote island, and there's a suspicion that the culprit may have been a family member of Harriet's. Both Lisbeth and Mikael are cunning researchers who would normally have better things to do with their time. But each of them has a motivation to work on this case. Mikael was recently involved in a legal scandal that tarnished his reputation, so getting away to a remote place seems like a great idea (plus, solving this case may even give him some redemption). For Lisbeth, considering what she's gone through in her life, getting the chance to catch someone who murdered a young girl is just too tempting.

It takes about an hour of the film's running time before Lisbeth and Mikael actually meet each other. The contrast between the quality of the scenes involving each character couldn't be more stark. The Mikael scenes are sufficiently engaging, but every time Lisbeth appears, she burns up the screen with her menacing, reticent persona. Consider a moment in which the film cuts back and forth between what's happening to one character and what's happening to another. Lisbeth is exacting sweet, horrifying revenge on someone, while Mikael is... well, I don't remember what he was doing anymore. I just remember getting a very "meh" feeling and praying for the switch to Lisbeth to happen as soon as possible. So, in a way, when Lisbeth and Mikael finally meet, it represents the end of the greatness that this film could've aspired to, as Lisbeth becomes an aide in a whodunnit that's rather lackluster and doesn't have much of a surprise in store for us. In fact, the solution to the mystery of Harriet's death comes more from an exercise in playing "Where's Waldo?" than in any sort of interesting or substantive discovery. To make matters worse, the film is too long by about 30 minutes, and the final act feels very protracted, where a tight epilogue would've been more efficient.

Still, the presence of this utterly fascinating character throughout the majority of the running time is certainly enough to make this worth seeing. There's a fantastic early scene that takes place at the escalators of a subway station in which Lisbeth's badass persona is put on display in a quiet yet aggressive way. I think that my dissatisfaction isn't just limited to how I feel about the potential that this film had to be great if it had focused less on the mystery and more on Lisbeth's life. I think I'm also feeling a dissatisfaction that's similar to what I felt last year after watching the Coen brothers' version of True Grit. In this case, it's all about the fact that I know Fincher is capable of making something fantastic out of raw material like this, as he did masterfully in Se7en and very well in Fight Club. In Se7en, Fincher's examination of humanity's filth and all the moral questions that came into play always took precedence over the puzzle that the two detectives were trying to solve. It's too bad that we can't say the same about The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. And it may be easy to rebut this by saying that he had to work with the source material, but my answer is that if you're making a film adaptation and your source material is weak, either don't make it or do something drastic in order to mold it into something great. But that wasn't done here.

Rooney Mara loses herself in Lisbeth's wretched, deeply tortured soul. You'd be forgiven if you felt surprised to find out that this is the same girl who traded verbal fireworks with Jesse Eisenberg last year during the opening scene of The Social Network. Lisbeth may not have long lines of dialogue, but she can convey the fire of hell with her penetrating gaze. Daniel Craig obviously has the less demonstrative role, but fares remarkably well without letting his celebrity status steal the spotlight from Mara. Part of me was concerned that the Swedish accents would be an issue, but the interesting thing here is that, apparently, Fincher had the actors affect an accent that didn't feel too pronounced, to the point that sometimes Mara strays right into American pronunciations, but it feels like a conscious choice rather than a mistake, and I preferred it that way anyway.

I find it incredibly perplexing that we've been deprived of the opportunity to get to know such a fascinating character on the profound level that we deserved. Yes, Lisbeth's involvement in the investigation helps to further show us what a great researcher she is, but there are clearly so many more layers to her personality that are suggested (from her experiences with her parents when she was a child to her criminal past to her sexuality) yet left completely unexplored. I know that it seems wrong to assess a film based on what it didn't do instead of on what it did, but I AM assessing The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo based on what it did, which is present us with a serviceable murder mystery that'll certainly pass the time but nothing that'll sear into our brains and souls. At one point during the film, Lisbeth angrily complains to Mikael about how much time she's spent working on the case, and she says "Because you and Harriet Vanger have kept me busy!" They sure did, and I wish they hadn't. But getting the chance to at least superficially meet Lisbeth makes the film worth a passing grade.