The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Though his remake of the Swedish film The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo starts off with a stylish title sequence that looks like a somewhat darker, slightly more twisted version of the ones that have played in James Bond movies over the decades, the moment it ends director David Fincher tells a story that couldn't be more different from a Bond film if it tried.

After a brief prologue in which an old Swedish aristocrat named Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer) receives a gift from a mystery sender, the story begins with Swedish journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) walking out of a courtroom after having been convicted of libel for a series of scathing articles about corrupt businessman Hans-Erik Wennestrom. Disgraced, Blomqvist is at a loss as to what to do next when he is contacted by Vanger's attorney. Blomqvist travels from Stockholm to the remote suburbuan island where Vanger and his entire clan live and Vanger regales him with the story of his niece Harriet, who disappeared from the island forty years earlier and who, Henrik strongly believes, was murdered. His suspects are none other than his own family members who live on the island with him. He hands Blomkvist all of the family records in his possession, including police reports and photographs on the scene, and persuades the down-and-out journalist with a considerable sum of money and, more importantly, dirt on Wennestrom. Blomkvist is skeptical that he will be able to figure out anything that Vanger was not, but enticed by the promise of redemption (and the money to replace that which lost upon paying damages as a result of the conviction) is too much for him to resist, and he sits down to work.

Running alongside this story is that of a young, talented hacker named Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara), who helped Vanger by performing a background check on Blomkvist, and who apparently does similarly shady work on a regular basis for the right price. By day, however, she is a ward of the state for somewhat gruesome reasons that are disclosed in the course of the film, a condition that has her often visiting her lawyer (Yorick Von Wageningen), somewhat unsavory character himself, for cash dole-outs, an arrangement which leads to a rather harrowing encounter.

As Blomkvist finds himself increasingly involved in the case, which was not quite as cut-and-dried as first it seemed, he meets the Vangers, including Martin (Stellan Skarsgard), Cecilia (Geraldine James), Anita (Joely Richardson) and Harald (Per Myrberg), whose reaction to him ranges from pleasant to downright hostile. All, of course, are suspects, but some more than others.

As Blomkvist gets hotter on the trail of his quarry, his path intersects with Lisbeth's as he learns of the background check Vanger's lawyer had performed on him. While angered by the fact that most of the information Lisbeth learned she did so by hacking into his computer, he decides that someone as resourceful as her could be useful to his investigation and she is onboard in fairly short order. Together, they unearth the truth, and as horrifying as it is, it isn't quite what they expected.

Now, as whodunits go the movie (and, not having read it, I imagine the novel as well) is not all that novel. The many revelations that unfold throughout the narrative are not all that far out of left field (even though there are some pretty startling ones) and the good guys/bad guys dynamic still feels like pretty standard stuff, and certainly not as unsettling as the chilling narrative of Fincher's breakout film Se7en, felt back in the day. What sets this film apart is its somewhat unconventional heroes, with Craig's bookish, useless-in-a-fight Blomkvist and Mara's tough-as-nails action heroine Salander making a somewhat unlikely but oddly compelling pair. Strong performances all around, especially Mara's and Plummer's also help smooth out some of the cliches, and help ground some of the film's more off-the-wall, somewhat disturbing moments (by way of a warning, just let me say for the benefit of the uninitiated that one of these moments involves anal rape). This movie may not have concluded with a gut-punch like Se7en did, but it has plenty of WTF moments of its own.

If there's a weak link here it's actually Craig, who unlike just about everyone in the cast did not even bother to put on an accent for his role, speaking in the Queen's English pretty much throughout the length of the movie. I'm no expert on Swedish accents but there was a sort of uniformity to the way everyone was speaking which Craig quite clearly disrupted. Whether it was Fincher's idea or whether it was because Craig was a diva, it simply disrupted the narrative flow. Not only that, but as goofy as the script dictated that he should be, Craig's body language never really convinced me that Blomkvist wouldn't be handy in a fight. Craig claims he put on a bit of weight for the role but he was nonetheless insanely lean (and I don't mean skinny) for a man who, by his own admission in the film describes himself as "old." I've actually liked Craig's acting in his other movies, Bond or otherwise, so I was somewhat disappointed by his underwhelming performance here, but I'm still willing to give him the benefit of the doubt; perhaps he was simply outshone by Mara, who is the undisputed star of the show.

It's funny how writers have described Mara as having upstaged Craig or having stolen the show considering that she does play the title character, and considering how Salander and Blomkvist are clearly co-equal characters in this film. It would perhaps be more apt to say that she lived up to the expectations of the director who took a chance on an unknown quantity such as her (though Fincher had already worked with her on a brief scene in last year's The Social Network, in which she had a small but pivotal role as Mark Zuckerberg's ex-girlfriend). I haven't read any of Stieg Larsson's Millennium books so I have no idea if Mara has stayed true to the character but I can say that, to my mind at least, she has created a character that is utterly transfixing, and not because of her many body piercings or gaunt face. There's a power to Lisbeth's silence as she contemplates her next move, whether it's to exact revenge on her lawyer or hack into someone's e-mail account for a client; as she stays quiet for much of her screen time it falls on Mara to convey that power purely with her face, something I imagine was challenging considering that Salander doesn't have discernible eyebrows. Also, I love it when actors play smart people really convincingly, whether it's by their line delivery or facial tics. Robert Downey, Jr. is one of my favorite examples and now I can add Mara to that list. Craig's Blomkvist is clever because the script tells us he should be, but Mara really sells Salander's mental acumen.

Of course, Fincher deserves full credit for extracting such performances out of his actors (Craig notwithstanding) and for keeping a two-and-a-half hour movie rather cohesive and rather dynamic, even when including some of the original narrative's more graphic portions which, in the hands of a lesser storyteller, could have somewhat derailed the proceedings.

If Fincher and company came back for the rest of the Millennium series, I can certainly see myself coming back for more, but I would appreciate it if Craig at least put on an accent next time.

4/5