Movie Review: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

Synopsis: This English-language adaptation of the Swedish novel by Stieg Larsson follows a disgraced journalist, Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig), as he investigates the disappearance of a wealthy patriarch's niece from 40 years ago. He is aided by the pierced, tattooed, punk computer hacker named Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara). As they work together in the investigation, Blomkvist and Salander uncover immense corruption, and danger.

For starters, I didn't read the book nor have I see the foreign version of the movie. In fact I knew very little about the story when the movie began. Perhaps this lowered my expectations as I wasn't all pumped up for it as fans of either the book or original surely were, but even if I had been I'd think this would have met all expectations as it's a wonderful thriller. In fact I'm sure I liked it more as I had no idea of the twists and reveals in the storyline.

Plot wise, it's really not that overly special or original, although complex at times. What stands out about it to me are the characters, especially the biker girl herself, and also the style of the director. It's just very well made and even running for over 2 1/2 hours I didn't feel that it ever dragged. I'm not saying the story itself is bad either as it's a very nice little mystery with a lot of intrigue, but it's the moments of intense violence and action that keep the blood pumping. It's dark, brutal and disturbing at times and not for the squeamish and in fact difficult to watch for anyone (I hope).

Of course I knew Daniel Craig would be great, he usually is and I'm a fan, but it's Rooney Mara that steals the show. They're a very odd on-screen pairing but somehow it works well.

Great cinematography and a wonderful score round out a movie that if you can handle, is well worth a watch. Looking forward to revisiting it someday myself already.

8.5/10