The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

A nice mainstream fairy tale. The humor and story work even if haven’t read the book or seen the original trilogy. It wasn’t that long ago that Hollywood found it necessary to update and rewrite Japanese and other horror flicks, but if it's currently fashionable to remake Swedish films, I'm somewhat more sympathetic to that. Lisbeth Salander is a girl that contemporary mass pop culture can't do without, so why not be happy that her series is good? Fincher doesn't always suit my tastes, I don't seek out Craig, and I wouldn't have thought Rooney Mara would be capable of such a personality after the Facebook girl. I'm very fond of Stellan Skarsgård this year and Christopher Plummer is king, but the person who is a downright joy to see on screen is the ethereal being Joely Richardson. I need to see Joely more often, and I'm very much in the mood for a little marathon with the original Lisbeth - and that's exactly the effect the film was supposed to have. (11/01/2012)

It’s not the Fincher masterpiece that we are used to, but book adaptations are never easy to (this time I didn’t have time to read it beforehand). The middle part with the investigation itself runs very smoothly, but both the introduction and the conclusion, despite being excellent, are a little cumbersome. The atmosphere of the frozen Swedish planes is nicely illustrated, precise direction as always and the hypnotic music of Trent Reznor. The cast is A-grade. Both Craig and Mara are perfect. A well-thought out, tense story. But don’t expect it to be the event of the winter. (15/01/2012)

I put this film off for a long time, but now it is clear that it was in vain. Thanks to its perversity, sexual titillation and solid complexity, it quickly won me over. David Fincher clearly puts his directorial experience on display here as well, and despite his usual apparently favourite long running time, but he doesn't get boring and manages to shock and titillate in between. I would have shortened the finale by 20 minutes, then it would have been a 5*, but still unexpectedly very satisfied. 80% (26/02/2015)

It is incredibly difficult to express myself about this movie when I saw the original one, Swedish. He actually managed to show me that David Fincher is an excellent director, that he can choose good music that can give the film a dimension, that he can choose excellent actors, who can excellently embody the characters from the book and moreover... can excellently say a few Swedish words like "takk" or "skol" or can speak English with such a completely natural Scandinavian accent. Well, the actors. Actually, I don't even know what David Fincher intended. To make another American film and present Sweden in it?... What if by any chance an American didn't know where Sweden is? Or to make a Swedish film, but only with English, or rather American actors? The film itself is good. There is nothing I would blame it for. But in the end, it has only one plus. And that's the actors. Everything else is just trying to surpass the original. But the original just can't be surpassed. Unfortunately. And it saddens me that a director like Fincher has tarnished his career by getting involved in something that has already been filmed once. Although, his problem. He has successors who can benefit from his films anyway, so what. (25/01/2012)

My slight disappointment stems paradoxically from my ignorance of the book, which is obviously not very suitable for filming. This is because the quantity of names becomes annoying after a while, although otherwise, Fincher does great work as usual in all other components, so we do get a great soundtrack (but this time it's too "off the charts" for the Oscar race:)), excellent cinematography (which underlines the pedantic narrative), and precise actors. But I'll definitely go see it again. The fact that the gardener is the murderer will soon dawn on even the slower folks, but that's beside the point. How we get there is the first priority this time. Fincher is the best director alive right now, period. (15/01/2012)