David Fincher has recreated “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” for English speaking audiences. The original Swedish film adaptation was in 2009 which has seen releases of the other two in the trilogy, “The Girl Who Played with Fire” and “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.” Being based on the novels by the late Stieg Larsson, the first in the series tells of the mystery of the Vanger family and the vanishing of Harriet Vanger, which had happened 40 years before the story takes place.
Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) is a journalist suffering from a recent setback of being sued in a libel case. He is hired by Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer) to find out what happened to Harriet, with all known clues leading up to murder. Blomkvist takes on a hacker accomplice, Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara) to help figure out what happened all those years ago and why. What follows in Fincher’s version of the novel is a perfect screen adaptation written by Oscar winning screenwriter, Steven Zaillian (“Schindler’s List”).
Rooney Mara’s performance of Lisbeth Salander, along with Noomi Rapace’s portrayal in the originals, has cemented the character in cinema history. Her character alone gives the film an interesting aspect to it, being completely different than Blomkvist and pretty much everyone else in the film. Her fellow hacker, Plague (Tony Way), also embodies the dark persona of the underground society that exists in the story. When first introduced, Plague is wearing a Nine Inch Nails shirt, being an homage to Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross who scored the film.
Being the second original score for a Fincher film in as many efforts, Reznor and Ross have made a huge accomplishment in their knack for musical composition in film. Having won the Academy Award last year for “The Social Network,” they are even more in their element here with a film with darker subject material. The musical opus that is the entire score runs close to 3 hours, reflecting the hard work and perfectionism that was put into it.
The short prologue to the film is followed by an opening credits sequence that is reminiscent of a Tool music video, played to Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, and Karen O’s (from the band Yeah Yeah Yeahs) cover song of Led Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song. From this point on, the film is given the fuel to keep interest for an epic that is a total 2 hours and 38 minutes long. Fincher’s version is even better than the fantastic Swedish original, keeping true to the source material with small omissions and changes that were for the overall good of the film.
While it is still unsure about David Fincher’s involvement for the second and third installments of the trilogy, they should be made nonetheless. Although, it would be a very different experience without Fincher’s signature as director. Only time and box office receipts will tell. “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” by Fincher is one of the best movies of the year, as well as one of the most highly anticipated being a dark, ominous story of “Men Who Hate Women” (english translation of the original Swedish novel’s title) that doesn’t leave anything to the imagination.
