The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Disgraced investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) is hired by aging Swedish industrial magnate Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer) to discover which of his despicable relatives murdered his beloved niece Harriet 40 years ago. As Blomkvist’s investigation uncovers links to ritual murders, he is joined by Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara), an expert computer hacker with a dark and troubled past.

For years, the words “American remake” were harbingers of a butchered adaptation of a foreign-language favorite. But as The Departed, Let Me In, and Insomnia have proven, Yankeefied versions of well-received films needn’t be substandard. The 2011 version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo certainly belongs in this grouping as well as both the cast, production values, and, above all, the director, make it worthy of, if not better than, both the original film and the source material.

In this case, the source material happens to be a wildly popular novel (reviewed here), the first in the late Steig Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy. For the 2009 film adaptation, director  Niels Arden Oplev excised much of the book’s informational clutter and coaxed a dynamite performance out of Noomi Rapace in the titular role. The bar, in other words, was set quite high.

Fortunately, this could not have fallen into the hands of a better-suited director. From Se7en to Zodiac, David Fincher has mastered the thriller like no other, and his expert command of tension is fully on display here. Though there isn’t much action per say until the film’s last hour, the sense of menace grows and grows as Blomkvist and Salander burrow closer to the truth. And knowing exactly how things will play out plotwise does nothing to dissipate it.

Fincher is aided in his delivery by some breathtaking visuals. Snow-covered northern Sweden is frigid and pristine, a perfect thematic foil for the sordid doings of its inhabitants. These sights are paired with some edgy sounds courtesy of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. Their version of Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” blares over the opening credits, and while it is likely to enrage Zeppelin purists, it is a good fit for the film’s dark sensibilities.

From a casting standpoint, the remake’s biggest hurdle was measuring up to Rapace’s strong performance. Several big names auditioned for Salander, but the role ultimately fell to the decidedly un-Swedish Mara, last seen as the indirect impetus for the creation of Facebook in Fincher’s The Social Network. But Mara, nearly unrecognizable here, thoroughly owns this role. It’s more than just the jet black hair, the surprisingly convincing accent, the pseudo-Goth attire; it’s the way she embodies Salander’s silent fury. Though not her equal, the usually arrogant Craig adapts well to playing a more reserved character, and Plummer makes the most of a rare sympathetic turn (though one has to wonder if Max Von Sydow was simply unavailable).

All of the ingredients of a great film are here, and yet The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo disappoints in one key regard. As original director Oplev put it, "Why would they remake something when they can just go see the original?" For as faithful an adaptation as the film is, a strong sense of purpose is missing here. That, the sheer brutality depicted onscreen (feminists and animal lovers will probably want to stay away), and the slackening of tension once the central mystery are resolved nibble at the film’s credibility, but they aren’t big enough bites to derail this Scandinavian-accented thrill ride.

8.25