Well here is a case of an artist elevating source material into something better than anyone else possibly could have done. The story has the same problems the second time around because, well, it’s the same story. But while the Swedish film adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is a fairly rote and dispensable movie, this new “Hollywoodized” remake pulls of something that comes around oh so rarely – an American remake of a well-liked foreign film that is far better than the original. Even the Swedish critics think so.
From the start, David Fincher’s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is unsettling, disarming, sexy, intense and in your face, thanks to an incredible opening credit sequence set to a hard driving cover of Led Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song setting just the right mood to get things going. And with the help of ace screenwriter Steven Zaillian (Schindler’s List, Gangs of New York, Moneyball), the characters are well realized and fleshed out and complex, while the story moves along at an incredibly brisk two hour and thirty-seven minute runtime thanks to the precise direction and excellent acting. And for the second film in a row, Mr. Fincher teams up with his Academy Award winning composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (The Social Network) and they delivered a compendium of angsty, moody, atmospheric music that helps bring everything home in a satisfying and wonderful way. So with all of these great things, why is this not the best movie of the year?
Because it is spawned from the same trite story as the Swedish film, that Larsson book that portrays Sweden as a land of Nazi-sympathizers with a general love for rape, that’s why it comes with an empty feeling when it’s all said and done. The story is centered on a 40-year cold case, a missing girl presumed murdered, and the two investigators who come together to solve the mystery, and after all the misdirection and twists and turns of the plot (which largely stay the same from film to film), it really all amounts to nothing more than an episode of Law & Order: SVU, just writ large and frozen. It can’t help but have the overall feeling of ho-hum, been there done that, because frankly it has all been done before and in many iterations.
While the story itself is weak, it all comes down to the characters, and again, thanks to strong writing and great acting, we have two central characters that are actually worth caring about. Playing the publicly disgraced investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist here is Daniel Craig, giving a strong performance at a point where he could really use one after the back-to-back tank jobs of Cowboys & Aliens and Dreamhouse. And owning the entire movie is Rooney Mara as Lisbeth Salander, everyone’s favorite bisexual hacker and investigator extraordinaire. To say Mara’s portrayal of Salander is intense would be an understatement, as she really brings this character to life in a credible and fascinating way, completely disappearing into the role and making it real and living.
It’s this Lisbeth Salander character that people around the world must be latching on to, because the story isn’t very memorable and it really takes ridiculously talented people like the one involved here to make it as entertaining and indelible as humanely possible. It’s this well realized and fairly fascinating person that people are drawn to, right? Go to any airport in the world and you will find tween girls sitting next to old men, and they are both reading this book, and you have to wonder why. It’s not the copious amounts of graphic sexual assaults that are drawing these people in, is it? Could it really be as simple as that, a modern piece of trashy exploitation consumed by the masses under the guise of modernist punk rock feminist girl power?
Oh, and if that’s your thing, the rape I mean, not the girl power, then saddle on up because this movie has it and then some; David Fincher set out to make a “franchise film for adults” and sure enough he has. The uncomfortability factor is dialed up to eleven in this film, and leave it to Mr. Fincher to take a Kubrickian cold and calculated look at the assaults and humiliation and violence. This is a guy who knows what he is doing and what he is making and his approach to material likes this is both tough and clinical, a nice mix of the art house and the grindhouse, but made for the multiplex, daringly enough.
No one ever needs to make another version of this story, because this is the best The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo we will ever get. It’s a very strong and well made movie, so well made that it overcomes the unoriginal story and lackluster mystery and eventual reveals, and it has me siding with those smart and well-reason Swedish critics – this time Hollywood got it right (at least in comparison).
*though the sidebar indicates a rating of 4 stars out of 5, this is more of a 3.5 star movie, but .5 stars aren’t possible with this silly thing and I can’t in good conscience give this a 3 star rating. So there you go.
Hear Christopher Crespo on SBK Live! every Monday night at 8:45 PM for a review of the prior weekend's box office and films.
Email Christopher Crespo at crespo11882@gmail.com.
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