A bit disappointed in Fincher

Rating: 6/10 (21 December 2011)

Coming into "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo", I had not read the book nor had I seen any of the Swedish movies. However, I had seen almost all of director David Fincher's movies, and I was excited after his last two, "Zodiac" and "The Social Network" thrilled me.
However, this movie does not quite live up to those standards. The story, a reworking of Steig Larsson's original book, involves Mikael Blomqvist, a journalist who has recently been found guilty of libel (Daniel Craig) and who is looking to escape the public eye and reinvent himself. Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer), a sickly old man who lives on an island in northern Sweden, seeks out Mikael's services in an attempt to unravel his family's past and solve a murder.
At the same time, Lisbeth Salander's (Rooney Mara) caretaker has recently had a stroke and she is switched to another one, named Bjurman, who repeatedly takes advantage of her when she asks for money. Don't worry, he gets his come-uppins. Eventually, she teams up with Mikael to solve the mystery and his personal life.
Mara does the character justice for the most part (although there were times where I thought her tenacity did not match that of the acts she was performing), but I take issue with how her character was presented. Without knowing more about her background, I had trouble caring when bad things happened to her. In addition, the viewer never doubts that she is going to succeed eventually in everything Salander undertakes, and so does not care all that much when bad things happen to her before those successes.
I greatly enjoyed Craig portraying a decadent, down-and-out Mikael. His use of deadpan, self-depreciating humor is excellent, although he is occasionally made to look a bit too incompetent in the scenes he shares with Salander. All of Craig's actions, from his incessant coffee-making to the way he sucks on his cigarettes, help create an image of Mikael that the viewer sympathizes with and wants to help. Well done.
The main problem with "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo", then is the story. Fincher does his best to gussy it up, with some fantastic shots of Sweden making it seem as if something or someone is always lurking around the corner. Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor do a brilliant job as well, and the use of sound was by far my favorite part of the film. However, neither of these details stops the story from being clunky and a bit bland. After getting almost nowhere for about half the movie, the second Mikael teams up with Salander, suddenly everything seems to fall into place, her incredible Google-search skills teaming with his ability to ask questions leading them to the villain relatively quickly.
It would have been quicker, however, if they didn't stop to have sex every two scenes. I have nothing against sex scenes, but this one is so out of the blue and against what Salander's ethical makeup had been up until that point, that the viewer almost feels deceived. It felt as if the movie had to fulfill some sort of heterosexual sex quota, character development and plot be damned!
Mikael finds the killer (well, sort of), Martin Vanger (an excellent Stellan Skarsgard), who, in typical bad guy fashion, talks to Mikael instead of murdering him, giving a speech that actually would have been brilliant if he had followed through afterwards. However, the speech gives Salander enough time to solve the mystery on her own and save the day. Woo.
Anyway, there is much to like about this movie. The acting is quite good, and there are the usual Fincher-ian touches that make it more than just the average thriller. However, it hits so many pit-falls, both in terms of plot and in terms of characterization, that it is just barely more (than average).