One of the Year's Best; Oscar-worthy Mara makes a truly iconic turn as Lisbeth Salander ; kudos to Fincher!

Rating: 10/10 (5 January 2012)

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO (2011) **** Daniel Craig, Rooney Mara, Christopher Plummer, Stellen Skarsgard, Robin Wright, Joley Richardson, Steven Berkoff, Yorick van Wagenigngen, Goran Visnjic. Filmmaker extraordinaire David Fincher's highly stylized techniques meet their match with the Americanized adaptation of the international best-seller by Stieg Larsson's novel (skillfully orchestrated by vet scribe Steve Zaillian) about disgraced Swedish journalist (Craig nicely underplaying the bookish Mikael Blomkvist) who teams up with troubled yet tenacious researcher savant/cyber-punk hacker incredible Lisbeth Salander (Mara in a truly audacious Oscar worthy performance; one for the ages) after being enlisted as a detective/writer for hire by industrialist magnate Plummer to investigate the mysterious decades-old disappearance of his young relative, a girl who may have met her demise by a nefarious cabal –their family. With a knotty plot involving rape, Nazis, torture and other-things-that-go-bump-in-the-collective night, Fincher keeps a sharply clear-eyed viewpoint : the inhumanity humanity inflicts upon itself in the vicious circle of life's evils unleashed. To wit: one of the most harrowing on screen rapes and the subsequent vengeance thrust upon her attacker, Mara's Lisbeth Salander becomes an iconic character with her ingenious plans and underestimated resilient intelligence. From its relentless Trent Reznor cover of Led Zeppelin's "The Immigrant Song" with its post-BONDian title sequence the film gets its tenderhooks in you..and.never.lets.you.GO! One of the year's best films!