There’s one thing that can be said about Dragon Tattoo…it’s certainly different. From the moment it opens with its sexy-pulsing soundtrack – Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant song” – you suspect (even if you haven’t read even one of Stieg Larsson’s serial-killer books) that this is going to be steeped in some edgy voyeuristic journey. And with director David Fincher (Social Network, Zodiac and Seven) at the helm we can see why.
Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) is hired by a blue blood family member, Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer) requesting Craig to “stay on my island, in my cottage, and I’ll pay you double your salary” to investigate the murder of Harriet, a young woman that died years ago. And while we can empathize with the families pain, we somehow lack any connection to caring. They talk of characters, uncles, brothers, we never see nor know anything about.
Who we do care about, oddly, is the young heroine, Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara) a tattoo-pierced punk whose pale complexion and haunting eyes should be everything we hate. But we don’t. She’s an exotic creature, a self-motivated ‘ward of the state’ who shines on screen even when she stands still and just stares you down in silent rage. Lisbeth is revenge just waiting to happen. Her icy-appearance, those hack-chopped bangs, those red flare-ups from her latest piercing that act as her internal war scars… We want her. We like her. And apparently so does her caretaker, Bjurman (Yorick van Wageningen) a gross pig who feels entitled to take advantage of her.
Mara and Craig don’t connect until many scenes later (40 minutes of divided screens) and when they finally do team up he wants her as his partner in crime-solving But prior to that, his scenes are dull. We beg for more of her. And that’s a high order since she’s sharing a big screen with um, James Bond! Maybe because she was sexually abused since childhood, and finally stands up to her own, maybe because she defies quintessential feminist, or maybe she’s in-control yet at the same time ready to burst, but whatever it is, she’s the IT girl.
Steve Zaillian does a master job weaving the necessary subplots of sadistic crimes, Semitism, child abuse, exotic S & M, but the story lacks in fluidity. Discombobulated from the get-go it’s piece-mealy and lacks the semblance of the original Swedish version. That said, these characters are edgier, and twisted with a dominatrix feel and a sense of danger not felt in the original. But you can decide for yourself which version you prefer, and at 160 minutes running time, that shouldn’t be a problem. Two and a half tiaras