Commercial and forced Hollywood remake of Swedish hit

Rating: 6/10 (18 January 2012)

The Girl with a Dragoon Tattoo is another best-seller title taken by US/UK filmmakers and adopted for Hollywood standards. High budget, celebrity actors and big big commercial campaign to pump up cinema views. I am a big fan of the whole trilogy and beside second part I've drown completely in the story and in the characters. Being curious of new, commercial adaptation I wanted to check by myself if all these critic's reviews aren't just another cinema campaign. And sadly I can say- they are... which is really frequent nowadays.
First impression- main plan characters:
Daniel Craig as Mikael Blomkvist- I didn't like him as a new James Bond for that, that he looks like and act like Russian gangster not a British spy-gentlemen and I can say that also in GWDT he lacks of a style and doesn't fit for a soft role of journalist. Couldn't really feel his pain for loosing trial, nor even his fear to die at the last scene. He really is a great fit for relentless characters (eg. Cowboys and Aliens) but not for a emotional ones. Mikael Nyqvist was much much more natural in his role.I think even Sean Bean would fit better here.
Rooney Mara as Lisbeth Salander- gosh, when I first seen her I thought she's a ghoul. Noomi Rapace beside that she was self-confident outsider, angry on whole world, hating all the man for what she came through in her childhood- she was also dragging attention- pretty hot punk girl. Full of emotions, building interest and questions who she is. In Fincher's film- Rooney Mara looks unnatural and not attractive at all so I simply don't care (maybe it's chauvinist point of view but it is how this world works). With all this punk-sadomasochism style- yet again she lacks natural expression and her role looks a bit artificial and flat.
Scenes: Like a characters- whole film looks for me artificially- I think the reason for that is that makers were following a Swedish script and were interlacing English actors with Swedish ones and Swedish world. I really would much more appreciate a brand new story based on the book but in the new realities and new world (for sure watching Swedish version strips the film of novelty). Film seemed to be a cover of a popular album- playing the same song with a new, foreign artists. All like original but without a freshness and with dose of exotic accents. Background music was really pompous and was only covering the silence. Couldn't feel that it was building emotions to the scenes.
Was it worthy going to cinema then? Yes. Despite all the acting and photography, script- it's still a good movie- emotions are rather built on the investigation progress- and even if it feels like the action goes too quickly ahead (because of lack of "interaction" with a characters) you still feel excitement with a new discoveries. It is definitely not as good as an original and not as good as you can read on the other reviews... but I don't regret going to cinema- rather because I have seen another adaptation of very good film, not because I have seen very good film.