Fincher Blows the Swedish Version out of the Water!

Rating: 10/10 (1 January 2013)

Fincher's version of the international bestseller blows the original Swedish film out of the water, and rarely, rarely does an American remake of a foreign film surpass or even equate to the original. For example, I saw French horror film "Diabolique" and foreign Sci-Fi "Solaris"; then watched the American remakes and all throughout I was thinking, "Shame on you Hollywood!" To my splendid surprise that wasn't the case with Dragon Tattoo. Every single aspect of the English version is phenomenally superior to its predecessor: directing, acting, editing, cinematography, production, script, music score, plot construction, suspense, terror, and especially Rooney Mara's Lizbeth Salander.
The Swedish version is 152 minutes; with the English version you get twice the amount of story and character development in only 158 minutes. I cannot for the life of me understand why every Swedish film maker thinks they're the first one to discover the art of slowly paced story-telling, or why they think they know how to do it right when a great deal of the time they don't.
Fincher has painted a dark, evil, haunting picture that makes his previous thrillers such as "Panic Room", Se7en" and "Zodiac" look like tame, PG-13, M. Night Shyamalan films. Once again, Fincher has raised the bar on shocking, graphic, riveting film making and once again, the Academy deprived an underrated masterpiece of its rightful Oscars such as Best Actress Rooney Mara, Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Script and Best Music Score.