Plot Ignored: Incoherent Chaos With Gratuitous Sex

Rating: 2/10 (12 May 2012)

Had I not read the 3 books and seen the Swedish releases I would not have understood the plot. Much of the audio was inaudible mumbling. Important plot elements were changed and/or omitted: jail time; first contact between the principals Mikael and Lisbeth; the coterie of fellow hackers; finding Wennerstrom and giving his location to his criminal associates; putting the missing woman in London -- where it is implausible that she would have escaped discovery -- instead of Australia.
The trail of evidence -- the real genius of Larsson's book -- was given short shrift, much neither shown and even more not explained. This story is about "Men Who Hate Women" (Swedish Title) two generations of homicidal Swedish Neo-NAZI misogynists. Almost all of that was left out.
Much of the sex was gratuitous, unnecessary to the plot and more like HBO soft porn. The movie should have been X-rated. Even more detrimental was the total shift of focus from Neo-NAZI misogyny to action scenes, with the protagonists "responding" -- in the police sense -- to invisible stimuli.
If the film editing were responsible for the inclusion of so much sex and the omission of the evidentiary links, then the Academy Award was a stupid mistake.
Ms. Mara did an adequate job as Lisbeth, but often did not let her native intelligence show through. It may have been poor direction, but she seemed to be without a center, displaying relaxed charm and social poise in some scenes after appearing wooden and autistic in others. Ms. Rapace, in the Swedish release, presented a more coherent, more irritating character.
Dragon Tattoo (2011) is a sex and action film created to exploit a hugely successful Swedish novel and film. Unfortunately, in its execution, most of what you get is a little low-grade porn. Watching Tattoo (2011) was in no way an uplifting experience. Thank goodness the film fared so poorly at the box office that the butchery will end here and no sequels will ensue.