A good effort

Rating: 7/10 (24 January 2012)

A valiant effort to overcome the severe limitations of yet another unadaptable novel.
Fincher is no doubt one of the great directors and yet even he struggled to come to terms with the unwieldy Scandinavian novel.
Brilliantly realized, cast and scored, this is a difficult one to get into. I so wanted to adore this and yet it proved strangely distancing and a bit underwhelming. Rooneý Mara is pretty much exactly as I had read her in the book. An exotic and autistic mix of precocious devil and broken ingénue. Interestingly, for such a feminist icon, she does end up being crassly objectified in her sex scenes, but hey - she probably comes off quite well in the long run and her career is sorted now.
Daniel Craig is underused and a disappointment but all the other characters live up to the novel.