THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO
Nordic Nasty

Directed by David Fincher
Starring Daniel Craig, Rooney Mara, Christopher Plummer, Stellan Skarsgard

We’re up to the third iteration now of the Millennium Trilogy, counting the Swedish films and the wildly popular novels by the late Stieg Larsson on which they were based, and by now pretty much everyone is at least passingly familiar with the story of investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig), damaged and dangerous hacker Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara), and the entrenched misogyny and decrepit old Nazis they regularly smack up against. The question is, what’s new in this latest retread?

Sadly, not much. Director David Fincher (Fight Club, The Social Network) is one of the best filmmakers currently working, so it’s hardly surprising that the film looks fantastic, and the tale that unfolds once Blomkvist, disgraced and broke after a libel scandal, is hired by elderly industrialist Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer) to investigate a decades-old murder has enough meat on its bones to keep the uninitiated enthralled. The problem is that any opportunity to sand down the source material’s rough edges has been missed, with Fincher and screenwriter Steven Zaillian content to stick as slavishly close to the original template as possible.

It’s a crying shame, because a talented writer - and Zaillian, who scored an Oscar for Schindler’s List, is certainly that - could have remedied some of the serious structural and pacing issues inherent in what is, once you get past the murky sexual politics and attitude, essentially a lurid potboiler. Such a writer could also, perhaps, make Blomkvist an interesting character, instead of just a glaringly obvious author avatar (for the uninitiated, Larsson was a socialist journalist who campaigned against corruption and the Far Right; Blomkvist is a socialist journalist who campaigns against corruption and the Far Right, and also sleeps with an impressive number of beautiful women).

Having said that, these failings are almost forgivable thanks to the truly impressive turn by ingénue Rooney Mara as the iconic Lisbeth. It’s hard to believe that another performer could make the role their own after Noomi Rapace inhabited the character so completely in the Swedish films, but Mara is an absolute revelation. Formerly a fairly forgettable pretty face - she had a minor role in The Social Network, and starred in the regrettable remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street - she’s undergone a complete transformation here, portraying the abused and angry Lisbeth as so far along the Autism Spectrum to be almost alien, in a performance that’s strangely, yet appropriately, reminiscent of David Bowie’s work in The Man Who Fell To Earth.

But one great performance isn’t enough to save what is, in the end, an entertaining but forgettable film. Fans of the material will flock to it, but even Fincher obsessives will admit that this is a minor work in his canon, to be shelved somewhere between Panic Room and The Game.

_TRAVIS JOHNSON