Very exciting thriller

Rating: 8/10 (9 February 2012)

The most shocking movie I've seen recently is "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" with Daniel Craig produced by Colombia Pictures. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is based on the famous novel which has a huge fan base. The movie is directed by David Fincher, and the screenplay is written by Steven Zaillian. It was released on December 20, 2011 in North America.
Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) is the co-owner of "Millennium" magazine and is hired by Henrik Vanger who is the retired CEO of Vanger industries. Henrik asks him to find his niece, Harriet Vanger, who went missing 40 years ago. Blomkvist moves to a cottage on a remote island and starts to investigate. He visits Harriet's closest relative, Anita in London, but she don't help him.
In the meantime, Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara) is hired by Blomkvist to help his investigation. Although she is under legal guardianship due to mental problems, she has a very high level of technical skills as a computer research and hacker. Blomkvist finds out suspicious girls names and 5 digit numbers, and they indicate Bible verses. Salander investigates and notices that murdered women are located in the places where Gottfried, Harriet's father, was on business trips. Also, she finds that Gottfried's son Martin, current owner of Vanger, and brother of Harriet, has become a murderer like his father. The family belonged to the Swedish Nazi Party before, and Gottfried and Martin had mainly killed Jewish women. While Blomkvist is searching Martin's house, Martin catches and tries to kill him. Salander rescues him. They think Harriet might be alive. Actually, Harriet killed her father and escaped from her brother because of sexual abuse. She had used Anita's identification to completely vanish. After Martin's death, Harriet visits her uncle Henrik who is looking for her.
The genre is mystery, thriller, suspense, and drama. The background, a remote island where only the Vanger family lives, enhances the thrill. Also, a vanished girl in an isolated island makes it more mysterious like the movie "Shutter Island". It contains lots of sexual and violent content and deals with sexual abuse. In my opinion, there are some scenes which are disturbing, shocking and that were unnecessary. The scenes where the new guardian of Salander, Nils Bjurman, rapes Salander, and she later gets revenge on him.
The acting of Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara was very well-done. Especially, Rooney Mara looks like Lisbeth Salander. She is completely different from her movie "Tanner Hall" where she acted as Fernanda, a shy and studious girl. Since it is based on a novel, the plot is very well organized, and directing is flawless.