Just Hollywood doing what it does with foreign greats, really, but done slickly and successfully enough to be a hit

Rating: 9/10 (14 January 2012)

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning
Swedish journalist Mikhael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) has had his credibility shattered after losing a court case brought against him by a giant corporation for printing an alleged in-truth. With his career hanging in the balance, Mikhael accepts an offer from an eccentric man named Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer) to locate a girl who went missing over forty years ago. As he digs deeper into the case, he uncovers a pattern of serial killings that may hint at the girls disappearance, as well as a dysfunctional family that want to tear each other's throats out. Mikhael finds he must join forces with troubled, socially awkward freelance journalist Lisbeth (Rooney Mara) who was involved in gaining insider information about him to his enemies in court, in order to get on top of a deadly net that's closing in on him.
Not a town known for it's creativity and original ideas (and, with a recession blazing, even more so) Hollywood has a history of adapting foreign films that have gained a cult status (that it's dubious whether they'd have got had they actually been from there originally) and turning them into bigger budget productions that are often, to say the least, not as good as their source material. Thankfully, this is not the case with David Fincher's adaptation of Sieg Larson's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, the first of what promises to be a trilogy of adaptations of novels in the series.
Having seen the original film, and been impressed with the visceral way it gets under your skin, there were few genuine surprises in store for me here in the way the story pans out, but it remains a compelling murder mystery, as well as a dark, unflinching glare into the heart and mind of a serial killer, which Fincher handles the way he's handled similar themes before in films such as Zodiac and Se7en. The Hollywood style has naturally granted it a sleeker, glossier look than it's Swedish inspiration, but it still maintains a dark veneer through out, which is matched by the style and the soundtrack.
Performances wise, Craig is an inspired choice in the lead role, his intense acting style perfect for the role, while Mara is a revelation as the unfriendly, unsociable but troubled and sympathetic young woman. Since they're the main driving force of the story, it's fitting they're all playing related characters, but as the support cast the likes of Plummer, Stellan Skarsgard and Joely Richardson are a credit too, really creating the impression of a family where everyone hates each other's guts and each are holding secrets from each other that could serve to shatter.
With a 158 minute running time, and having to live up to the standards of such great source material, Fincher's film would have to pull a real cat out of the bag to work and, thankfully, it's done it, the first Hollywood slant on a series of works that will hopefully set the tone for the rest. ****