Hey all,

Hope you had a wonderful holidays and all that.  We’re back in business for 2012, and very excited about it to boot.

Enough about us for now, though- I’ll have an update on that stuff next week.  Needless to say “Manifest Destiny” is nearly picture-locked and ready to head to sound, after many months.  Huzzah!

For now-

“Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” Review

Two caveats:

1. I have not read the wildly popular thriller novel that this film is based on, so I am coming from a fresh point of view on the story and will not address problems with adaptation (Hey! They changed the story from the book!)

2. David Fincher easily makes my top three in terms of favorite directors.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo tells the story of Lisbeth, a ward of the state since a very early age in Sweden, no parents, all of that- and Mikael, a Swedish journalist who has had his name sullied by an alleged libel against a billionaire businessman.  His career appears to be in ruin when Vagner, a rich man who has shut himself and his family away on a remote island, calls him in to write the story of his family legacy, with his actual intent being to use his investigative skills to find out who murdered his niece almost 30 years ago.  Lisbeth, who performed a background investigation on Mikael earlier, is called to help him with the investigation, and the two form a strange partnership- that of two people, rejected by society in entirely different ways and using that as common ground in the absence of anything else.

Fincher is traditionally known for cultivating atmospheres of tension and dread and for an aggressive visual style that brings the material to new significance through style (see “Fight Club”.) These elements are present, though certainly subdued from his work in the 90s and the 00s- more stylized than “The Social Network”, to be sure, but certainly restrained.  Still, his visual style is extremely effective in highlighting character emotions and the dire-ness of certain situations in the film. The acting is great, particularly on behalf of Rooney Mara, who really commits to the tortured role of Lisbeth. Fincher relies heavily on partner/composer Trent Reznor to heighten mood and tension throughout, and is wildly successful- perhaps Reznor’s best score, though he has not done too many yet to date.

Story-wise, the film is unsatisfying on a few levels.  As a character piece revolving around Lisbeth, in which she fights to leave a system that considers her incompetent and criminal and actually shine as a brilliant hacker/investigator in the real world, and her struggle to form relationships (to varying degrees of success) with people who judge her by her looks (she, of course, is covered in tattoos, piercings, etc.) and her attitude rather than her actual merits.  The film is fascinating in this regard, and serves as an interesting indictment of a society that forms opinions of people and dismisses them without proper due diligence- just because someone is different. Lisbeth’s arc, fully realized by Mara, is fascinating throughout, and Fincher reserves the best of his style moments for her scenes. Daniel Craig, as Mikael, does well to bring life to a character who really doesn’t change or learn much over the course of two hours.

The problem lies in the actual procedural murder mystery that both characters are tasked to solve. Fincher isn’t incorrect on focusing on this story- it is, after all, the series of events on which Lisbeth’s emotional journey is framed- but it is predicable.  It feels stock. It’s not bad in any way- it makes perfect sense and the scenes are by no means boring- but they are pretty unspectacular.  You can predict the killer relatively early on in the film, and it lacks the twists and turns of a really, really good whodunit film. It’s rather straightforward, with the end result being somewhat underwhelming from a plot perspective. Tension really only exists in a few scenes, and I wouldn’t call it edge-of-your-seat, and Mara’s role in the investigation is pretty slight.

Fincher and his actors, however, do well with material that might not deserve them, and do their best to make it captivating.  The result? Success, and two hours very well spent, even if the film is far from seminal for Fincher and is his least important movie since “Panic Room” (though it is much better than that film.)

GRADE: B+