The girl with the dragon tattoo

Rating: 8/10 (26 March 2012)

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is a murder mystery/thriller directed by David Fincher in which investigative journalist for Millennium Newspaper in Stockholm, Sweden Mikael Blomkvist(played by Daniel Craig). After being found guilty of libel is asked by Henrik Vanger(Christopher Plummer) former CEO of his family's company to stay on his family's island to the north to find out which one of his family members killed his niece over 40 years ago or if she is still alive under all while under the guise of him writing a memoir about him, promising in return a larger salary and evidence to prove he his libel to be false. He eventually garners help from the title character Lisbeth Slanader(played by Rooney Mara) who is a troubled young adult and ward of the state, but is an skilled investigator in her own right. I can't tell you how close it follows the book, but overall it is an entertaining and well put together film.
The acting in this movie is great, but Rooney Mara steal's the show with her performance which is one of the best this year, by getting completely into her role, from getting drunk the night beforehand to look hung over even though she herself is not a heavy drinker and getting stark naked multiple time throughout the movie, once being in one of the rape scenes, and the character herself gives the expression of someone who is dark and anti-social while keeping it fresh, even her accent sounds Swedish. Even though Craig's performance is not as good as Mara's, he still does a fine job acting a serious dramatic part, instead of just a pure action star which I have only seen him as until this point, but his English accent can get distracting at times. The film itself also has a large ensemble of Swedish actors which makes the setting all the more believable.
The on set locations for this movie added to that since of isolation and uneasiness Mikael felt throughout the movie when it starts out in the middle of winter and with Sweden at the time experiencing the worst winter in 20 years it definitely added to the feeling of the movie and with seasons changing throughout the movie it gave the viewer the feeling of months are actually passing by instead of keeping a similar looking environment throughout the year.
Despite all the pros about this film there are still faults to be had with it, the major one is introducing characters who have little to with the plot and forgetting them the rest of the movie. An example of this is when Lisbeth goes to fellow friend house to get a device to trace people's emails, you could say that is to show how she got the item, but there is another item later on in the movie showing her putting up surveillance cameras without showing how she got them, maybe that character got more time in the book, but in the movie he is pretty much useless as a character. Another fault of the movie is that I really never felt like I knew the family, sure there were small note cards, but not enough information to see them as characters and with them barely mentioning their names it was hard to tell who was who and who they hated, when they mentioned them and near the climax when they are piecing together the final parts of the mystery, like Mikael said, "I think I am getting confused on who is who." As I said before I enjoyed this movie and pros far outweigh the cons. 4/5 stars. Rated R for Strong Violence Strong Sexual themes Strong Language Drug and Alcohol use 2 hours and 37 minutes