The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

I don't think this movie should have been made. The only reason it exists is because North-Americans are too lazy to read subtitles, and need an English-spoken remake of a (reputedly) perfectly serviceable Swedish movie. HOWEVER, I will not count that against The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Just like I reviewed Conan by its own merits, I'll review this movie as a stand-alone work.

Based on the Stieg Larsson book Män som hatar kvinnor ("Men Who Hate Women"), David Fincher's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo ("Unnecessary Retitle") is a mystery/detective/drama film about Mikael Blomkvist, played by Daniel Craig, a journalist who has been found guilty for libel and witnesses his career falling apart around himself. To his surprise, he receives an invitation from reclusive ex-CEO Henrik Vanger, played by Christopher effing Plummer, along with a job proposal: Vanger wants Blomkvist to investigate his family and find out who killed his great-niece Harriet in the sixties.

Meanwhile, young deliquent Lisbeth Salander, played by Rooney Mara, who was hired to do the background check on Blomkvist before he got the job, goes through trouble with the social services, and strives to survive in a society that she has a hard time fitting into. At first her subplot seems needless, but it ends up uniting with the main story halfway through the movie... which is a bit too late for my tastes.

The setting of the movie is a delicate matter, but I am happy to report that Dragon Tattoo manages to feel like it's set in Sweden, rather than being obviously American. The street signs, the candy wrappers, the nature... it never broke my suspension of disbelief. The langauge is an interesting thing: the actors speak English with very slight Swedish accents, which reinforce the feeling perfectly. The one exception is a TV-host heard early and late in the film, who goes for the most exaggerated Swedish accent ever, and made me giggle out loud both times she spoke.

The performances are top-notch. Plummer shines especially, but Stellan Skarsgård as Vanger's great-nephew Martin manages to also be extremely convincing and kind of impressive in his big scenes. Daniel Craig, whom I've always been ambivalent toward in the past, makes a really good everyman protagonist. Rooney Mara is kind of weird: the character she plays is so obviously messed up that at times it's hard to tell if the actress is doing a bad job or if it's all a part of the movie.

David Fincher's touch is felt throughout the project: the weather is used effectively to establish atmosphere, the camera angles are really impressive without being distracting... the different elements are all sewn together with expertese.

The movie suffers from those old, well-known pacing issues that are almost inevitable when adapting a book into a motion picture. As mentioned above, the two plotlines seem really inconsequential toward each other for most of the movie, and the movie takes way too long to wrap itself up at the end. The final scene is great, but the five or so scenes before that could have been cut with almost no impact.

The weird thing about Dragon Tattoo is that it inherits certain elements from the source material, which make it at times feel like a European detective story in the trappings of a Hollywood blockbuster. This is especially visible in the research montage: it's exactly the sort of thing that is used to drive the plot forward in The Old Fox and other German detective shows my parents used to watch, but it's edited and shot in such an exciting and efficient way, it almost becomes a music video at times. So yeah, best research montage ever.

I recommend this movie to everyone, and especially people who like detective stories. It's not too American for Europeans, and it definitely isn't too European for Americans. I still have two weeks left to make up my mind, but this may be my "movie of the year".