I still have not read Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but if either film adaptation is a fair judge, it's a messy, convoluted mystery that meanders heavily on the personal lives of the main characters. All of this, in desperate hope of warming up the cold data streams, the dusty record books, the obscure photos and the torn newspaper clippings found therein. While the Swedish version and the American version certainly have major differences, one thing remains consistent - the emphasis on research. For better or worse, that seems to be the core of Mr. Larsson's novel.
David Fincher recently presented to the world his version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and it is an adaptation that is ultimately too reckless to be great, but too tactile to be awful. The film peripherally tracks the recent disgrace of esteemed journalist Mikael Blomkvist and the sexual abuse of the young computer hacker Lisbeth Salander, as the two become involved in a 40-year-old investigation regarding a disappeared member of the wealthy, devious Vanger family.
I will say right out of the gate that Fincher paces the story much more effectively than Niels Oplev did in the Swedish version of the film. Unlike Oplev's indecisive stop-start motion, you can tell Fincher wants to get on with things, and it never stops moving forward. Unfortunately, a hefty portion of the director's trademark gravitas is sacrificed in the process. Unlike the tense build-ups, dark humor and rich characterization of his previous works - Zodiac, Se7en, The Game and even The Social Network - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo feels like it's a new luxury car being pushed out of a manufacturing plant to meet a strict deadline. The pacing may be more effective but the contents framed within don't always meet Fincher's typical standards of quality.
The best example of flawed execution are the research segments, which are littered across the entire movie. Where as in Zodiac you felt like you were an active and engaged participant in the investigation, Fincher forces you outside in Dragon Tattoo. In an effort to streamline the story's chronology, the audience becomes ineffectual bystanders, just nodding along and thinking how cool it looks to see the vague research methods employed by Lisbeth and Mikael as they uncover the truth. There are so many sequences of panning by desks filled with notes and books, shifting laptop programs and wall photo trees with indiscriminate yarn and push-pin strewn across them. You just look at all of it and say to yourself, "yes, they have been doing research". There's no personal satisfaction or epiphany, it's just, "this is the plot, this is how the plot came to be", which would be fine if the story's severity didn't come directly from all that esoteric research.
I thought all the performances in Dragon Tattoo were decent. Nothing necessarily to write home about, but the acting was solid all around. I actually preferred Daniel Craig's Blomkvist to Michael Nyqvist's in the Swedish version. Nyqvist's portrayal seemed to be more of an ineffectual buffoon, where as Craig presented some slapdash (but affecting) passion into the character. Of course, the real draw is the black leather punk, Lisbeth Salander. Rooney Mara plays her with a mousey defiance, never really raising her voice or acting out of turn, instead taking on the role of deadpan harbinger. Naturally, as a damaged 23-year-old waif with tattoos, piercings and partially buzzed hair, she embodies the assertive goth/punk/emo fantasy expertly. She certainly doesn't shy away from sex, even turning rape to her advantage at one point.
Perhaps that says something about the preferences of Stieg Larsson? All I know is that I would have rather had Noomi Rapace back in the role of Lisbeth. I feel like Rapace's more intense and volatile rendition of Lisbeth was more affecting. She still had her apathetic drawl but it always met with a fiery passion burning underneath.
So, add to all that a disappointing and misplaced music score (a big step down from The Social Network) filled with generic bells on top of wavering ambience, and you have a sloppy, sloppy film. Sloppy in its material, concise in it's form. The question really is, was this version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo even necessary? It doesn't improve enough upon the Swedish version (which is already Hollywood-ified) to justify its existence. Is the idea of not having to deal with subtitles an excuse to blow $100 million dollars?
