The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2011) – A Review

Nominated for 5 Oscars this year, this English speaking version of the hit movie The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is making positive noises in the box office. I have seen the original three movies which tell the story of Lisbeth Salander played here by Rooney Mara and I have to say that I am very impressed.

The plotline of this movie – for those of you who don’t know – centres around Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig), an investigative journalist who is given the task of looking into the disappearance and assumed death of one Harriet Vanger, the niece of a wealthy businessman who vanished when she was just 16. Now 40 years on, it is up to Blomkvist to attempt to shed some light on the matter. This could be a dangerous journey, but assisting him is an unusual computer expert and part-time sadist Libeth Salander.

I call her a sadist, but that is a very general description for her very complex character. There are many reasons why she does the things she does which are expanded on during the movie and into the other two stories in the series, The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest. Salander is actually a very clever person who hides her abiities behind her outward appearance as a Goth and usually gets the same reactin from anyone she interacts with.

I really liked the film, it was a much clearer version of the story than its Swedish counterpart and explained a few things in much more detail although some parts were dealt with more swiftly which led to the flow of the story being much better here and in turn made it much more entertaining. The cast is a good one with the addition of Stellan Skarsgaard and Robin Wright and of course the extremely talented Christopher Plummer. Daniel Craig puts in his usual “adequate days work”, but the stand out performance here was Rooney Mara. She has been nominated for Best Performance By An Actress In A Lead Role at The Oscars and although I don’t think she will get it, she was excellent and any other year she may have just won it. Damn you Meryl Streep!

I think anyone who has either read the book, or seen the original film should watch this and draw your own comparisons but I give this movie a well deserved 8/10 and although I had some annoyances with some music and sound mixing during scene crossovers, the whole package is very well done as far as remakes go and I hope that they continue onto the other two parts in Stieg Larsson’s Millenium Series. Here’s the trailer for you…oh and my wife’s review over at Diary Of A Domestic Goddess. =)