A pretty standard movie for most part but that's not necessarily a bad thing of course.

Rating: 7/10 (7 January 2012)

For me personally, this movie was not that much special to watch but then again this might be due to it that I have seen too many English detective-series already, so that might explain why I wasn't that impressed by the story and why everything came across as quite standard. That's not a bad thing of course but it did prevent me from seeing this movie as anything spectacular, surprising or that very involving.
In that regard, this perhaps is also a bit of a disappointing movie, also when considering who was at the helm of it. David Fincher movies are always something great to me but there is basically nothing about this movie that screams David Fincher out at you. It might just as well had been directed by a totally different director.
The movie in essence is a whodunit. It just takes awhile for the movie to finally get there and make clear to you what it is all about. Seriously, when looking back at it I don't really know what the point of its entire first hour was. The introduction of all of the characters- and the setting up of its plot lines, could had all been done much simpler and quicker. Actually because of its first hour, I had a really hard time getting into this movie. But yes, eventually I did, when the story started to become more focused.
But then came the last 20 minutes, or so, along. The movie was beginning to suffer from the same problems at that point again. It went on for too long and the movie really gave you the impression it should had all ended way sooner because the story felt pretty much rounded up already. With its 158 minutes, it's a really long movie to watch and there was no reason really for the movie to be as long as it was. It's probably only so long because they were afraid to leave out some elements from the books because it might anger some of the fans of it, which could had harmed the movie financially. But really, purely from a movie perspective, lots of the stuff and even some of the characters should had been left out. It would had made the movie and its story more focused and less fragmentary and confusing to follow at times.
Really, this was still my biggest problem with the movie; the story felt very fragmentary to me. Basically it had a story of characters going- and talking to each other but most of the time I was actually wondering 'now, who is this?', 'where is he going?', 'why is he going there?', 'why is this character or story-element relevant to anything?'. I know this is an usual thing for a thriller-mystery to do but the movie does it in a bit of a messy way, which doesn't always make things look connected to each other.
I'm probably sounding like I hated this movie but that is of course not the case. It's just so I had issues with it, which all prevented me from seeing this as a great or successful movie within its genre. It's a good movie but not really one I am ever likely to see again. At least not any time soon.
And that's really all this movie comes down to; it's certainly a good enough movie and really not an horrible one in any way or form but really all together, not all that special.
There are still multiple things that make this movie better than just average, the acting being one of them. I especially liked Daniel Craig in his role and the movie also has a really solid supporting cast with actors such as Christopher Plummer, Stellan Skarsgård, Yorick van Wageningen, Steven Berkoff and Robin Wright involved.
I still foremost liked watching the movie, just never fell in love with it, in any way.
7/10
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