Great adaptation: faithful and powerful

Rating: 9/10 (2 February 2012)

WAY BETTER THAN THE FIRST ADAPTATION I was amazed that people thought so much of the original adaptation. It was clearly not a good movie (caveat: I saw the TV version in two parts which is longer than the movie but still feels rushed and disjointed). Whatever you think of that Scandinavian movie you can't seriously say the main character, Mikael Blomqvist, was magnificently embodied. The actor had zero charisma, he felt so boring you couldn't buy he was passionate about his work (and women - and in turn his sex appeal was questionable). Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salander was good but not great and you could feel it was for lack of top-class directing skills in the Danish film-brewer.
FAITHFUL TO THE BOOK Actually the first book in the Millennium trilogy is such a good thriller - it is really a top-tier page-turner that deserved to become a best-seller - that the story (featuring Lisbeth Salander as the most engaging character) is enough to have people feel they are watching something original, thus good.
Stephen Zaillian's adaptation really does justice to the book and we really have to congratulate the producers and director David Fincher for not shortening significant parts of the original story. At over 2h30 the story is never slow, neither rushed. Most importantly Daniel Craig is a perfect Mikael Blomqvist (and I admit I don't like him as 007), Rooney Mara feels more fragile than Noomi Rapace and is thus much more touching.
I am not a great fan of David Fincher but now his visual gusto is matched by great scripts (well, he earned that through lesser works I think) he does wonders. Clearly here you can tell the production sense and values were perfectly in tune with the original material, plus Fincher shoots the perfect pace, the perfect emotional tone as he directs Craig and Mara (and the supporting cast as well) to hit the high marks.
Sole big blunder: an over-bloated and totally out-of-line opening credits sequence. This is not a super-hero movie or a saw gruesome horror flick: clearly here less - much less - would have been more. Credits displayed over an extended presentation of Mikael Blomqvist (possibly thru Salander's private eye) would have been way better. The fact is the only unfaithful bit is the English title (chosen by publishers) but there was really no urge to make it that explicit so soon in the movie.
Now I am expecting a lot from Millennium II - The Girl who played with Fire. The book was boring, long digressions and obvious suspense with a multi-pronged investigation stalled for pages. Here the movie can even be better than the book, too bad they didn't shot it back-to-back with the first movie.