Movie Review: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)

Let's talk about perfect casting for a few paragraphs.

"The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" has it. First, it makes complete sense that the actress who should play Lisbeth Salander should be unknown. Rooney Mara may be known for her brief role in "The Social Network", but she's unrecognizable here. Had the actress who played Lisbeth been somebody we knew, like Jennifer Aniston or Cameron Diaz or Ruth Buzzi or the girl who plays the oldest sister on "Modern Family", we would have been distracted because none of them seems like Lisbeth Salander and because Ruth Buzzi is almost eighty. This is a character that requires absolutely no distraction so that she can fully emerge, though I do admit I found myself wondering how the Pittsburgh Steelers were going to do over the weekend because Rooney Mara is related to Steelers owner Art Rooney. But that just meant I knew she was tough.

Then you have Daniel Craig, who is the perfect Mikael Blomkvist. He perfectly evokes the soul of a man whose life is teetering on the edge of complete collapse, but whose intellectual curiosity and pride ultimately keep him from sinking into depression. And in a way, Craig is playing against type because Mikael is an intellectual and Craig's other iconic character, James Bond, is like the perfect man. Mikael is full of flaws. He's not the perfect combination of coordination and training. But he's got pride and he's got respect for the truth. I also like the fact that he's a total slut.

I think it's that pride and respect for the truth that connects Mikael and Lisbeth and it's perfect that director David Fincher recognizes that. He's like Columbus seeing the new world for the first time. That connection is Fincher's America. And I realize that Fincher isn't an actor, but the decision to have him as the director is perfect. Fincher understands dark material and although I generally prefer happy material, if material is going to be dark, somebody who understands and has experience with dark material should direct it. You don't want a director of Hallmark commercials directing "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" unless maybe somebody attacked him with a stack of Hallmark cards and now he's really mad because he's got those nasty cuts you can get from Hallmark cards all over his body.

And, of course, the best casting of all is Stellan Skarsgard as Martin Vanger because he's a great actor, but also because he's actually Swedish. It's two kinds of awesome that a movie based on a bestselling Swedish book would hire an actual Swedish actor in one of the important roles. Usually Swedes just play butlers or hot prostitutes. It's kind of like when Steven Spielberg made "Amistad" and cast real black people to play the slaves instead of doing CGI or having white actors with make-up like Robert Downey Jr. did in "Tropic Thunder". After all, there are plenty of good black actors like Samuel L. Jackson and to take a job away from them is sad. It just makes sense that if you have a character who is Swedish that you hire a Swedish actor because then you don't have to train them to do the accent or hire a dialect coach. It's win-win. We win and Sweden wins.

Whenever a great book is turned into a movie, people who read the book usually complain about one thing or another being left out. Naturally, there's no way to satisfy everyone, but I think David Fincher and screenwriter Steven Zaillian do one of the best adaptation jobs ever. The important thing is to get the feel of the book right and that's what they do. They don't shy away from the dark side of these characters. They don't shy away from what Lisbeth goes through early in the book. They don't shy away from what makes the relationship between Lisbeth and Mikael work and that's this: hot sex. I guess there's also mutual respect, but who really cares about that when there's hot sex and Daniel Craig is one of the participants?

There's a tremendous amount that happens in "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" and the film creates the same sense of mystery created in the book. After suffering public embarrassment in a trial in which he's found to have committed libel - the worst offense a journalist can make - Mikael is summoned to the estate of Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer) where he's asked to solve a murder mystery that involves Henrik's family. That Henrik generally despises his own family is an added twist.

I don't want to give away more of the plot for fear of ruining the film's many surprises. Fans of the book always want to know how the movie deviates from the book and whether or not those choices work. As far as choices go, I think the ones made by Fincher might be among the greatest decisions in history next to the United States' decision to ambush the Japanese at the Battle of Midway and Chastity Bono deciding to get a sex change.

Since there was so much development of the main characters before they even met in the novel, Fincher has to accelerate that meeting and cut down on the character development. There's a lot less of the stuff between Mikael and Erika Berger (Robin Wright), though she's still a meaningful character. Fincher recognizes the importance of getting to the story quickly. Thus, both Mikael and Lisbeth are developed through action - the quintessential scenes that defined them in the book. For Lisbeth, that's the rape and the initial reports she does for Armansky (Goran Visnjic) and Frode (Steven Berkoff). For Mikael, it's prancing naked in the forest (oh, a girl can dream, can't she?).

"The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" made me want to go out and get some piercings, then buy a motorcycle so I could whiz through the city and find another place to see this movie a second time.