Takes a the original to a whole new level, and still falls short.

Rating: 4/10 (8 March 2014)

I know what you're going to say: The original is sooo much better. No it isn't! The hell it is! The original bored me to tears! The characters were so two-dimensional it's scary. The direction was so non-existent that I'm guessing the director just phoned it in.
I thought Fincher would remedy that. But, uh-uh. This is more of the same. Granted, Fincher has an eye for the visual. And this version is at least pretty to look at. And the music is good, as well as the sound editing. So there's that. But that Lisbeth girl is still a ROBOT! If you're going to have Mr Data in your movie then at least have the decency to call it sci-fi!
The story still feels like it was written by a 10-year old. Inconsistent, haphazard, incongruous and cobbled together. It feels like this story was written with the "time honored" tradition of "story-telling by dice". "Let's see what they do next! *Rolling the dice* Oh! All of a sudden the 18 year old mentally incompetent girl has to go to bed with the 50 year dude! Yeah! Good work, dice!" Christ...
Still. It IS a rather large improvement over the Swedish version, which had the same idiotic story, except it had terrible actors, atrocious photography, worthless music, and no direction. So in that sense this is a triumph! At least this movie gets everything right except for the story and character direction.
So where the Swedish version got a 1 from me, this one gets a 4. But make no mistake; it's still a bad movie. But it's not a train-wreck like the Swedish version.