The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2011)

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

American remake of Swedish novel/film written... by a dead man's hand!

Just caught this over the weekend. Tight, taut thriller, I thought. (Not having seen/read any previous iteration of this.) What do you think?

[Guest themetfairy]

Well done, although too violent for my tastes.

And they could have easily chopped off the last 5-10 minutes of the film - they were anticlimactic.

Rooney Mara was fabulous, and deserving of her Best Actress Golden Globe nomination.

[Vic Sage]

a terrific movie, though a bit disjointed.

the first 20 minutes and last 10 minutes comprise one story, and the middle 1.5 hours are another. But the framing story is necessary to set up the whole trilogy.

Frankly, i found the framing story more interesting than the serial killing nazi story it encompasses, which i thought was kind of predictable. The last 10 minutes could have been fleshed out into a pretty good thriller all by itself.

The performances are terrific, the direction chilling, art direction evocative... the opening title sequence is, in and of itself, one of the best music videos i've ever seen.

Mara deserves an Oscar.

[bmfc1]

I agree w/the above comments. I hadn't read the book so the plot was a surprise (other than the fact that the lead character had a tattoo of a dragon). Fincher is a fantastic director and Rooney Mara was great. The last 10 minutes were superfluous but it didn't detract from an excellent movie.

Vic--good point about the title sequence. It's something that Fincher emphasizes.

[MFS62]

Finally saw it this past weekend on cable.
Well worth the wait.

Later

[TransMonk]

Other than making it more music-video-esque, this version did little to build on the Swedish version of the film (where the Swedish characters actually spoke, uh, Swedish). Can Americans truly not read subtitles, or was this version only necessary in order to include McDonalds and Apple product placements between the scenes of rape, incest and torture?

Meh.

[Vic Sage]

you answered the question yourself.

Whether Americans CAN read subtitles or not, there's no doubt that they WON'T, at least not in large enough numbers to justify making a film. So once Hollywood decided to remake it, the question wasn't "what should we add to justify it".... it's "how can we make this story of rape and murder in sweden cool enough to draw a mall audience in Pasadena?"

David Fincher's dark and visually compelling style was well suited for the material, and Rooney Mara and Daniel Craig were excellent. It told its complex story comprehensibly with a framing story that allows for the sequels to follow. Product placement? i didn't notice, but i'll take your word for it. But how is that different than any other Hollywood movie?

If you prefer the original films, i won't argue. They're excellent. But i only thought to seek them out after seeing this one. And preferring the others doesn't necessarily make this one ungood.