Nice work from David Fincher

Rating: 6/10 (5 March 2012)

Not having seen the original Swedish version and not knowing anything about the author, the novels or the previous films and sequels, I approached this movie just as it is: a new work from that genius called David Fincher.
After a long, complex, Hans-Ruedi-Giger-esque, not-contents-related main credits sequence —unless you can see something at a deep symbolic level— (and, fair is to say, so eye-catching that you find yourself having a big trouble trying to read the credits texts itself) but nice anyway, Fincher loses (for the first and only time in the movie) sight of his objectives and the narrative he's trying to tell. Yes, very scarce in Fincher's work, he drops the ball and spends at least 10 minutes trying to introduce the characters to the viewer. And he completely fails.
After this —the critical period when some percentage of the audience very well could think "This doesn't make any sense" and replace the DVD for "The Birds" or something), he finds the path again, more precisely when the viewer discovers what the mcguffin is and what the characters and supposed and expected to do to find it out.
The movie goes on as a very effective thriller, with all the classic ingredients to maintain you nailed to the seat, and a handful of superb actors that deliver just as needed, and better.
The dark, oppressive, claustrophobic visual treatment gives the atmosphere, and the obvious Fincher's directing skills conduct the narration in an impressive, brilliant manner.
That's true, this is not a Fincher masterpiece, but, as a standalone picture (and not trying to compare it with its Swedish precedents), this movie works, and functions very well indeed. The disembodied, fleshless violence (at times for no reason at all) represents the jungle in the middle of Scandinavia, and the characters' struggle to find a dark, elusive truth conducts the action until the interesting —yet somewhat foreseeable— climax.
All said, if you forgive those clumsy first minutes noted above and wait for the plot to develop, this film could become a very enjoyable experience, particularly for Fincher's visual style fans.
Worth seeing? Yes.