Not Worth Eight Dollars

Rating: 5/10 (7 January 2012)

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is not a kiddie movie, but a fell-fledged aberration from what is acceptable in modern culture. Tons of nudity, sex, and violence, infiltrate the senses within the two-and-a-half hour runtime of David Fincher's adaptation of the bestselling novel, of a hacker enlisted to solve a fifty-year-old cold case. The senses are barraged with so much of what is typically not seen as socially acceptable, that it is often hard to find a grasp as to the story and the purpose of why our senses were barraged to begin with. Not only that, screenwriter Steven Zaillian gets a bit carried away with the adaptation, with so much of the story focused on Lisbeth Salander, the titular girl with the dragon tattoo (who is played well by Rooney Mara), rather than focusing on Daniel Craig trying to solve the murder. The thing is, Salander plays no real importance to the plot till halfway into the film, and that first half could have easily been shortened had so many scenes of Lisbeth not been included that did little to add to the story or to her character, but simply add to the barrage on our senses. Well acted, with moments of genuine suspense, but is filled with too much excess to find any real traction to keep one engaged in the story or its characters.
I give The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo a 5 out of 10!