Evil Shall with Evil be Expelled.

Film: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Year: 2011
Director: David Fincher
Written by: Steve Zallian
Starring: Rooney Mara, Daniel Craig, Christopher Plummer, Stellan Skarsgård, Robin Wright, Joely Richardson, Yorick van Wageningen, Goran Visnjic, Steven Berkoff, Geraldine James. 
Running time: 158 min.
This is out in New Zealand cinemas on January 26th.

It is a tough life being a remake. Moreso if it is a Hollywood remake. There are the endless comparisons to the original. Then there are the differences between the two: if it is too different, people hate it; if it is shot for shot, people also hate it. And if Hollywood remakes a foreign film, then the makers get slammed for encouraging the lazy people who can’t be bothered reading subtitles. Yes, usually remakes don’t fare too well, but there is the occasional exception. David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is one such example of that. However, there is an exception to that exception: Fincher has made it very clear that his version isn’t a remake of the 2009 Swedish hit. Instead, it is an adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s wildly popular posthumous novel. A novel which has sold more copies than The Very Hungry Caterpillar. When you put things into perspective, a lot of people would like to adapt this book, but I’m glad that Fincher was the one to do it.

Larsson’s novel, I admit, is not one of the better ones I’ve read. However, it does translate well to the screen, as I loved the original and this one certainly didn’t disappoint. No doubt, you already know the story: disgraced magazine editor Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) is hired by ageing Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer) to write his memoirs and investigate the disappearance of his niece Harriet back in 1966. This job is set up so Mikael can earn his name and credibility back, but as he delves deeper into the case and the Vanger clan he discovers things that he couldn’t have expected. Soon he decides he needs a research material, so he enlists the help of Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara), a damaged girl who has a superior talent for hacking, but not for human relations or generally being sociable. The two now have to find out what happened to Harriet and what she has to do with several murders on the island.

The problem with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is that it has quite an intricate, if a little convoluted plot. The Vanger clan is rather large and there are a lot of people, all with different links to the Harriet disappearance to keep up with. In between that, there is Mikael trying to get his credibility back and have his rival Wennerström go down in flames, Lisbeth’s many problems and then the relationship between Mikael and Lisbeth. I’ve always accredited Dragon Tattoo’s success to the character of Lisbeth, who is a strikingly different female character that doesn’t fall into any stereotypes. One of the things that made the original Swedish version so good was the chemistry between Mikael and Lisbeth, as they were so different than each other. This version definitely succeeds with the character of Lisbeth, with Rooney Mara filling the size ten shoes and delivering extremely well, also being one of the only non-Swedes who could keep a Swedish accent for nearly three hours of film. The chemistry between Mara and Daniel Craig is there, but not as much as I had hoped. Maybe that is because Craig always seemed ‘just there’ to me, as he comes to the party with his normal British accent. But in some ways, I guess it is a given that Mikael can only provide being ‘just there’, since Lisbeth is such a strong character, both in the way she is written and in her level of strength.

Screenwriter Steve Zallian, who wrote Schindler’s List, does a wonderful job of mapping out every little dark alley of plot here. Given the considerably long running time, nothing really goes unexplained. Sometimes, that becomes a bit of a problem, as it is a little too expository, but otherwise, Zallian makes good sense of the webbed story. I liked how the film would go back and forth between Lisbeth and Mikael until they met, showing how different their lives are and how they shouldn’t have possibly come together. That’s the beauty of this film/story. What’s of course not beautiful, though, is everything that Lisbeth goes through with her guardian Nils Bjurman (Yorick van Wageningen). I’ve heard that many people say that Fincher aimed to shock with that rape scene. There’s no shock about it. This is not torture porn, nor is it a chance to show gratuitous sex. It is unsettling, chilling and horrible to watch, because the way that it is done is so raw. The violence in this film is different to much of the violence you’ll find in other movies – it is real, painful, not thrilling and in some way, it has a lot of purpose. The fact that Rooney Mara had to go through the large majority of that violence is another reason why her performance is one of the best – if not the best – I’ve seen from 2011 so far.

Coming off the back of The Social Network and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a chance for Fincher to return to the dark cinema he does best. This is not the Fincher who made those films – this is the Fincher that made Zodiac. Like that film, this one gives up its secrets slowly and focuses more on the atmosphere than the violence, which is quite evident as he uses the music of Enya while one of the most violent scenes in the movie takes a backseat - genius. With the grey landscape of Sweden and the cold tones from another masterful score from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, Fincher gives us a pretty chilly and occasionally biting piece of film that had me glued to the screen in a way that I hadn’t experienced with either the book or the original. His direction, paired with the great cinematography from Jeff Cronenweth and the marvellous editing from Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall makes this film a truly great one, which I’d like to see more of during awards season. Hopefully Fincher continues on with the series, as he could breathe life into their mediocre material. But with that ending, as genuinely devastating as it was, I don’t think Fincher could take his chips down now. He has too much of a good thing going.

What I got:

Side note: I find it ironic how since turning 16 I haven't seen a R16 in cinemas, but I have seen what is to be a R18 in cinemas.