THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO 2011 – Review

David Fincher, maker of ‘Seven‘, ‘The Game‘, ‘Alien 3‘ and other known movies, remakes the 2009 version by Niels Arden Oplev. It has only been 2 years and a director already thinks they can do a better movie-adaption of Stieg Larsson‘s Swedish language novel!

 

Starring:

Daniel Craig – Mikael Blomkvist
Rooney Mara – Lisbeth Salander
Christopher Plummer – Henrik Vanger
Stellan Skarsgård – Martin Vanger
Robin Wright – Erika Berger

 

As in the original movie, Mikael Blomkvist (Craig) is a publisher and co-owner of a Swedish political magazine, puts his job at risk after publishing an article about a wealthy businessman named Hans-Erik Wennerström, branding him a criminal without concrete evidence.

Now with his job, status and finances at risk, he receives and offer he cannot refuse to restore his life before all the legal cases against him begin. He is offered the task to investigate the disappearance of the great-niece of former Vanger Corporation CEO Henrik Vagner played by (Plummer) and in return Vagner will give him all the information he needs to prove that Wennerström is a criminal. Easier said than done, as the great-niece went missing over 40 years ago and no-one has been able to find her, including the police. Everybody concluded that she had been murdered and Vagner  believes that someone in the family killed her.

 

 

That’s when the movie becomes interesting, because Mikael takes the offer knowing this is his only chance of redemption!

He starts off quite well but then hits a dead-end and requires assistance which comes in the form of Lisbeth Salander (Mara) a researcher for Milton Security and a computer hacker, who actually had been doing an investigation on Mikael for Vanger’s lawyer prior to them meeting – which Mikael isn’t too pleased about.

Lisbeth was a bit reluctant to take the assignment until the moment she discovered the full story and the hunt for the murderer and the niece becomes even more interesting and literally passionate!

 

 

Compared to the original movie, David Fincher portrays Lisbeth’s character as a harder, sexual, explicit and aggressive female, with nothing female-like about her. Mikael on the other hand is a more ‘let me do my best’ character, as his life depends on it.

The movie is over 2 hours and sometimes struggled a bit to keep you engaged, which didn’t help much by the dark filming, but nevertheless I think Fincher did a good job.

 

If you are a fan of Daniel Craig, or David Fincher than you will like this one. However, if you enjoyed the original, starring  Michael Nyqvist, then this one might not be for you. But I shall leave that up to you.

 

 

Review by: George Boateng