A mostly pointless film, but well-made and gripping

Rating: 7/10 (17 October 2012)

I always thought an English redo of TGWTDT (or the Men Who Hate Woman as the original Swedish novel is clumsily titled) was utterly pointless. From watching the end result you'll be mystified as to where the $90 million budget went (the 2009 version cost $13 million). Thankfully the movie itself offers a bigger mystery to distract you from that, but globally the 2009 movie was far more successful and made more money. It seems that $90 million was spent simply to appeal to Americans who couldn't be bothered reading subtitles.
The story is mostly the same to Niels Arden Oplev's interpretation, with a few relatively minor deviations and contractions. Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig, not even bothering to attempt a Swedish accent) is disgraced journalist who is hired by Henrik Vanger, a wealthy old businessman, to solve the 40-year-old disappearance of his favorite niece Harriet. He takes the job to keep busy while his name and reputation turns to mud.
Mikael throws himself head-first into the case but soon requires an assistant and so he recruits Lisbeth Salander, a misanthropic genius who did the background check on him. Together they uncover decades of dark family secrets and the wrath of a still active killer.
Like Niels Arden Oplev before him, David Fincher almost gets the balance between visual and verbal storytelling right, but loses his grasp on the multiple characters and references to dates, places, and people. Some of the dialogue that should orientate the viewer regarding such things is too quiet, quick, and mumbled. Inattentive viewers will not find this film easy to follow. It does however have far superior photography to the 2009 version, which I thought looked flat and plain and was shot nasty Super-35. Fincher's incarnation is shot in lovely 5K Redcode RAW and is far superior when it comes to atmosphere and mood.
Not exactly a film to watch with your grandparents (curiously, the screening I went to was filled with OAPs) but a solid mystery for grown-ups who want something deeper than the average episode of CSI.