It kinda tries your patience, but David Fincher and Rooney Mara excel.

Rating: 9/10 (3 February 2012)

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is David Fincher's follow up to The Social Network. It had some serious hype behind it, and for the most part, lived up to it. The movie begins with promise in the form of a stellar opening credits sequence (They had me at Karen O.), and leads into a very unnerving two and a half hours of suspense and mystery.
The movie has to juggle together the narratives of Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander. This type of back and forth cross cutting between the two is a bit on the uneven side, but when David Fincher's involved, such a thing can be expected, and forgiven. From head to toe, this is a Fincher film, and it's probably his most brutal film since Fight Club, so it's never an easy watch. He's enlisted expert crafts people that nail his style, including Jeff Cronenweth's brooding, sometimes claustrophobic cinematography, and a moody (if at times grating and overplayed) score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross that works nicely in the film (Thanks more to Fincher and his music editor than the composing duo), but makes a hideous listen as a stand alone.
Though I praise Fincher's direction, I still have issues with the script and with the pacing. I don't always think the script quite ties everything together as well as it should, but that may have a bit more to do with the editing. It's not that Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter's work is bad, In fact, it's actually good stuff. But the second hour of the film tends to drag, as does the ending, which goes on much longer than it needs to. I'm willing to be forgiving up to a certain point, but Fincher was really trying my patience.
Oh well, you can at least say that it wasn't a wasted experience, if only because Rooney Mara is spectacular in this movie. She not only looks the part for Lisbeth Salander (complete with excellent makeup), she vanishes into the role. This character is troubled, sexual, intelligent, and completely scary. Mara manages to convey subtle, filtered emotions, also topped with the occasional humorous sprinkle, to the point that I forgot that she was even acting. Undoubtedly one of the best characters of 2011.
*** out of ****