The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

The highly-stylised and fetishistic opening credits sequences (accompanied by an amped up version of Led Zeppelin's Immigrant Song) makes it feel like a female James Bond film, but David Fincher's English-language adaptation of the bestselling Swedish crime novel The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo shoots for more of a film noir feel. I haven't read the books or seen the original film, so I went into this cold, and therefore I can't really comment on how it compares to the other versions. What I will say straight up though is that Fincher's return to crime territory didn't really do much for me, but I will concede that this could be partially due to flaws in the source material.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo starts out as a character piece about two unlikely heroes, the disgraced journalist Michael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) and a punk-chic security specialist named Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara). Through different circumstances they both become involved with a hidden history of unsolved murders in Sweden, and eventually they join forces in the hope of linking these murders together and finding a previously undetected serial killer. It's a fairly pulpish idea; a forty year old missing person's case unfolds into something a lot more sinister, but I guess the selling point is via the character of Lisbeth (the 'girl' of the title), an enigmatic and emotionally damaged heroine for a new era in crime fiction.

The pairing of Blomkvist and Salander is an interesting take on the odd-couple dynamic you find in these sort of films, and whilst Daniel Craig seems to enjoy playing a bit of a wuss I think he needs to push himself into more diverse roles and get away from thriller/action territory altogether. His complete lack of a Swedish accent sticks out amongst everyone else's better efforts. Also, I have certain reservations about the character of Blomkvist. Knowing that the book's author (Stieg Larrson) was a controversial journalist, I couldn't help but think that Blomkvist is a bit of a mary sue. I mean; older journo helps save the soul of a hip youngster (who he also gets bonked by over and over again)... come on, really? That's the hero of your story? Fantasise much?

Depictions of anti-authoritarian subcultures (IE. Punks, hessians, straight-edgers) are always going to be problematic in mainstream texts, so I went into this with a certain hesitance in regards to the character of Lisbeth. It's all well and good for a million middle-aged pro-establishment readers to see this character as 'fresh' and 'different', but I'm always wary of that element of patronisation when it comes to using counter-cultures as fodder for fiction. So there's that question of whether Lisbeth is a true representation of a subculture, or if she's more a case of damaged goods aping a certain look, or if she's both. It seems most likely that she's both of these things, but it does place certain negative connotations on the subcultures the writer has traded on. I know this is a small and negligible aspect for most viewers (for a lot it will be a complete non-point), but it rankles me a little that this is the only kind of serious exposure most people will have to this kind of character. Don't get me wrong, she's a cool character (and Mara keeps it as subtle as she can), but I find it all a little weird.

So I'm giving this film a bit of a thumbs down... for a long time I was scratching my head over why there were two protagonists and I just kept waiting for the two storylines to link up. I know this story is essentially setting up a trilogy, but it just takes too long to get going into the actual guts of the plot. It should've been a bit more stand-alone. The story itself isn't anything super special either, it's just a murder mystery with ominous 'important' music. If you're a David Fincher fanboy (or fangirl) you'll probably still love this movie. It's dark and a bit twisted, and there are at least two rather graphic scenes that most will find shocking (I can't believe my 82 year old nan read this book and liked it!), but overall I just thought it wasn't anything great.

DIRECTOR: David Fincher
WRITER/SOURCE: Screenplay by Steven Zaillian, based on the novel by Stieg Larrson.
KEY ACTORS: Rooney Mara, Daniel Craig, Christopher Plummer, Stellan Skarsgard, Robin Wright, Steven Berkoff, Geraldine James, Joely Richardson, Goran Visnjic, Alan Dale

RELATED TEXTS
- The novel The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larrson. He followed it with two other novels before his untimely death, The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. Overall the series is known as The Millenium Trilogy.
- All three novels have been adapted into Swedish language films starring Noomi Rapace: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.
- Other David Fincher crime films: Se7en, Panic Room and Zodiac.

AWARDS
Academy Awards - won Best Film Editing. Nominated for Best Actress (Rooney Mara), Best Cinematography, Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing.
BAFTAS - nominated for Best Cinematography and Best Original Music.
Golden Globes - nominated for Best Actress (Mara) and Best Original Score.