Daniel Craig, with his stern countenance and sharp eyes, takes on the role of Mikael Blomkvist, a disgraced reporter for a progressive magazine in Stockholm who is hired by Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer), the aging patriarch of a declining industrialist family, to solve the 40-year-old mystery of his teenage niece’s disappearance. Mikael takes the job mostly because his entire life savings has been depleted and his professional reputation irreparably tarnished by a large corporation that successfully sued him for libel. Henrik gives him a cottage on the small island owned by the Vanger family, most of whom also live on the island but in separate mansions, which allows them to keep their distance from each other. The majority of the story takes place during the dead of winter, which adds a chill air of icy despondency and isolation to the action (truly “the land of the ice and snow” as screeched by Karen O in Trent Reznor’s lacerating cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” during the trippy opening credits sequence). The overall tone could effectively be describe as modern Swedish Gothic, particularly in the way the mystery revolves around a wealthy, dynastic family whose closet is filled with sexual perversion and Nazi skeletons.

Mikael is eventually aided in his investigation by Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara), a twentysomething computer hacker who was hired by Henrik’s lawyer, Frode (Steven Berkoff), to do a highly illegal background check on Mikael. Lisbeth is the film’s most unique character: an alienated, damaged young woman with great intellect and instincts, but even greater issues of anger and distrust. She physically embodies both her emotional isolation and her social antagonism via a Goth-punk aesthetic that favors black leather, multiple piercings, and a shaggy buzz-cut that can be formed into a striking mohawk (making her seem violent and aggressive) or lay limp across her face like a hood (making her seem wounded and withdrawn).

While much of the film’s lengthy running time involves either a great deal of talk or stylish montages of Mikael and Lisbeth working feverishly behind the glow of their laptops, the tempo is jolted from time to time with memorable setpieces, including Lisbeth’s particularly brutal punishment for Bjurman (Yorick van Wageningen), her court-appointed guardian who turns out to be a sexual sadist capable of great cruelty. Not having read the novel on which the film is based, I cannot say how well Larsson balances all of his various interweaving subplots. Screenwriter Steve Zaillian (Moneyball) does his best to make all the sometimes competing plotlines work together (his job is made more difficult since this is the first part of a trilogy, and elements of the plot that might seem extraneous here have import in later installments). Fincher and cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth (Fight Club, The Social Network) maintain an effectively dour atmosphere that is punctuated with the electronic beats by Reznor and Atticus Ross (who won Oscars for their work on The Social Network).

Fincher’s artistry redeems some of the story’s more sordid and exploitative elements, although he is unable to make the characters as fully realized as the Harvard narcissists he explored in The Social Network or Brad Pitt’s idealist detective-victim in Seven (1995). Rooney Mara, who had a small role as Mark Zuckerberg’s girlfriend in The Social Network, does a fine job conveying Lisbeth’s coiled animal rage and wary distrust, and while her complete commitment to her severe worldview engenders both empathy and a kind of awe, she never quite comes alive as anything beyond a clever literary device. Mikael, on the other hand, is simply a convenient sleuth-protagonist who brilliantly puts together clues without ever transcending the plot itself, a cumbersome labyrinth that ultimately boils down to the hunt for a serial killer—all too familiar territory for Fincher. And it is precisely the familiarity of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo that keeps it weighted down. It would be a good film for any director, but I’m waiting for Fincher to strike out into new territory again and lay claim to something no one thought he could do.

Copyright ©2011 James Kendrick

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