The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Review
Not as depressing as I thought it would be.
This is a good lesson relearned about not listening to people about movies before going to see them. A lot of my friends have read the book, and told me horrific stories about how depressing and chock full of rape it was. To be honest, I was at times disgusted and horrified, but at other times really, really interested and intrigued. It was a good story with good direction that kept me hooked even when it did what I would call running off the rails in a lesser film.
I just did a little research and suddenly realized a major reason why I liked this movie. The director, David Fincher, also directed my all time favorite movie, Fight Club. He also directed Se7en, the Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and the Social Network, movies that I have avoided but now will have to seriously take a look at. If you are male and have not seen Fight Club then order one of those memory improvement courses to try to remember what your testicles look like. (Fight Club image courtesy of the Movie T Shirt category)
Anyway, this movie is a perfect example of what happens when you take a great book and make a movie of it without tweaking the story too much to suit your own needs or inflated ego. Daniel Craig (Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, Layer Cake) plays Mikael Blomkvist, Swedish journalist who has just been disgraced by a libel case involving a rich businessman. His situation has caught the attention of another rich businessman, Henrick Vanger (Christopher Plummer-Up, a Beautiful Mind, the Sound of Music), who hires him to to investigate the disappearance and presumed murder of his granddaughter Harriot 40 years before. Prior to hiring Mikael Vanger had him investigated by Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara-the Social Network, Nightmare on Elm Street (2010), Youth in Revolt. Weird. She’s the daughter of the owner of the New York Giants. I should hate her for being born rich and then having an acting career, but I like her in this movie a lot), a troubled young girl who is extremely anti social but a brilliant technical investigator, who incidentally has a dragon tattoo.
I’m not going to get into the story too much, as this is a mystery movie and dropping even a hint of a spoiler would quality me for the third level of Hell. Lisbeth gets drawn into the investigation. There are about eight different subplots that not only don’t detract or fragment the main story, but actually greatly enhance it. There is one extremely brutal rape scene that I literally closed my eyes for parts of. I don’t need to see stuff like that. However, it was kind of integral so I won’t hit them too harshly on it. Otherwise, really interesting and intelligent investigation with a cool ending. The other strange thing is once the movie seems over, it keeps going for 2o minutes. Normally that drives me nuts, but it worked really well here. I guess it has to do with the fact that this movie is about the girl, not Daniel Craig really. Once you wrap your head around that fact you can let the run on story go.
The stars. Rooney Mara was unbelievable as the Girl. Two stars. Daniel Craig was good too. One star. In fact all the supporting cast was really good. One star. Great story that expanded as the story progressed. Two stars. Mystery films often times suffer from a lack of proper pacing (fast slow slow slow FAST done etc.) but this one was very well paced. Two stars. No attempt to dumb it down for idiots. One star. I don’t know what the deal is, but Lisbeth started the movie really unappealing, both physically and socially, but I was totally in love with her character by the end of it. One star for excellent character development. Some nice nudity not involving rape. One star. Overall great film, well worth watching. Two stars. Total: fourteen stars.
The black holes. Brutal rape scene, as well as a lot of other discussed and implied rape. It seemed like every woman in Sweden gets raped. Two black holes. A certain amount of frustration with some of the resolution by the end of the movie. One black hole. No one could settle on an accent to run with. Some had Swedish. Some had British. Some had American. Seemed a roll of the dice every time you found a new character. One black hole. Again, the movie is going to pay for my soft American brain, but during the investigation I found it hard to keep track of which suspect was doing what. There were a huge number of old photographs used and honestly I couldn’t tell one suspect from another in them. One black hole. Total: five black holes.
So a grand total of nine stars. This movie is pretty amazing. I think everyone should see it. It is good in the theater, but if you happen to miss it it will be almost as good on a large TV screen. Definitely not a good date movie, what with all the rape and everything. Also, while it is not as depressing as I thought it was going to be, it was definitely depressing. I am especially glad to have seen it as I know there are two more coming in the series. I am looking forward to them.
Thanks for reading. By the way, I saw the trailer for the Avengers and it looks pretty amazing. I hope I’m not being sucked in by good marketing. On the other hand, the rumors I keep hearing from the new Batman movie are giving me the chills. Please, Christopher Nolan, don’t choke on this one. Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu. Talk to you soon.
Dave
