The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
(out of 4)Starring Rooney Mara, Daniel Craig, Christopher Plummer, Stellan Skarsgård and Robin Wright Penn. Directed by David Fincher. At GTA theatres. 158 minutes.
Here’s where things start to get interesting, but ultimately it all comes down to the “girl” of the title, played here with a ferocious combination of rawness and vulnerability by 26-year-old Rooney Mara.
Now a dark and inhospitable place, especially in the story’s wintry depths, the island used to ring with the sound of happy children. One of them was 16-year-old Harriet (Moa Garpendal), beloved niece of Vanger, who vanished in the summer of 1966 after a road tragedy removed the island from mainland contact — and watchful eyes — for most of a day.
Harriet has now been missing for four decades, presumed dead and long consigned to the police “cold cases” file. But Vanger refuses to die without knowing the answer to the mystery, which for him is unusually insistent: he’s been receiving regular clues that suggest the killer is taunting him. Vanger also suspects it was one of his family members who did the deed, because how could an unknown murderer gain access to the isle?
“She’s different,” her security-firm boss understates.
Salander’s abundant personality disorders, the cause of which are detailed in later chapters of the trilogy, have obliged her to become a ward of the state, under the too-close attention of her oily guardian, Bjurman (Yorick van Wageningen).
Too bad that what she and Blomkvist are doing is mostly plowing through old paper library files and photographs, which plays as porn for diehard print lovers, but which doesn’t make for dazzling screen action.
Vanger’s family, described by the patriarch as “the most detestable collection of people that you will ever meet,” should fill the void. Alas, most of them are drier and flatter than a Swedish cracker, even the usually reliable Stellan Skarsgård, who plays the unctuous industrial heir Martin Vanger.
But what could anyone do with eye-rolling material like this? The villain is pointed out very early in the proceedings, something Fincher oddly underlines with a cat-torture scene (the violence happens off screen) that might as well be a flaming arrow of revelation.
“Why don’t people trust their instincts?” a character says.
Getting Led Zeppelin to approve the use of “Immigrant Song” over the opening credit sequence (sung by Karen O and produced by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross) wasn’t the uphill battle you’d imagine, given how reluctant Jimmy Page and Robert Plant are about their songs being used for commercial purposes. Said Fincher: “Led Zeppelin are very protective, as they should be. They have an amazing catalogue. They wanted to make sure that we respected it and it was our intention all along to communicate the idea we didn’t want to run it into the ground, we didn’t want to use it in every television spot. We wanted to pick specific places, the teaser and the title sequence to do it in.”
Daniel Craig was cast first for the movie as “the masculine centre of the film,” said Fincher, who sees him as a Robert Mitchum-like presence onscreen.
There’s so much smoking and coffee drinking in the books, Fincher considered opening every scene with a cup of coffee and a smouldering cigarette somewhere in the shot. But the cigarette count is way down from the books, said both Fincher and Mara. The actress had to learn to smoke when she got the part.
Christopher Plummer, who plays retired industrialist Henrik Vanger, who hires Blomkvist to solve the mystery of the disappearance of his great-niece, Harriet, joked with the press that they needed to speak up. “I’m 102 years old,” he quipped. For the record, the Canadian actor is 82.
(out of 4)David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is dirtier, more violent and marginally more complicated than the Swedish original — which was so recent, it still feels like it’s in theatres.
But is Fincher’s version any better? And does it matter? Here’s where things start to get interesting, but ultimately it all comes down to the “girl” of the title, played here with a ferocious combination of rawness and vulnerability by 26-year-old Rooney Mara.
Her take on cyberpunk Lisbeth Salander is the real reason to etch this Dragon Tattoo onto your grey matter, even if Daniel Craig’s Mikael Blomkvist is merely adequate as her crusading journalist sidekick.
Fincher’s remake and the original film are both cut from the same pulp cloth as the first novel of the Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson, who needed a good editor as much or more than he needed worldwide acclaim. The late Swedish author obviously had no fear of thriller clichés, or of telegraphing major plot reveals.
The question is, why would this material fascinate Fincher? He’s certainly no stranger to pulpy thrillers — such early films as Seven and The Game proved that — but he’s long since moved on to deeper probes of the human psyche, as witness more recent works Zodiac and The Social Network.
He also brings a certain look of dread to his films, which this time seems distinctly second-hand. Apart from a knockout opening sequence, a 007-style montage of figures swimming in something like oil, set to Trent Reznor’s vibrant rip of Led Zep’s “Immigrant Song,” the film might simply have recycled the sets of Niels Arden Oplev’s 2009 Dragon Tattoo.
The story still plods, perhaps even more than before. Mara’s Salander and Craig’s Blomkvist don’t even meet until the 80-minute mark of the film’s bladder-testing 158 minutes. They don’t start busting crime until about the 90-minute mark, a time when many other movies are wrapping up.The story, only marginally buffed by Steven Zaillian (Moneyball), is still the same “locked room” puzzle as before, the stuff of Ellery Queen and Agatha Christie potboilers.
On a remote Swedish island, where even a billionaire can’t get decent cell service, lives the bickering family of elderly industrialist Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer, happily hamming). Now a dark and inhospitable place, especially in the story’s wintry depths, the island used to ring with the sound of happy children. One of them was 16-year-old Harriet (Moa Garpendal), beloved niece of Vanger, who vanished in the summer of 1966 after a road tragedy removed the island from mainland contact — and watchful eyes — for most of a day.
Harriet has now been missing for four decades, presumed dead and long consigned to the police “cold cases” file. But Vanger refuses to die without knowing the answer to the mystery, which for him is unusually insistent: he’s been receiving regular clues that suggest the killer is taunting him. Vanger also suspects it was one of his family members who did the deed, because how could an unknown murderer gain access to the isle?
“I’ve spent half my life examining the events of a single day,” he tells Blomkvist, an ace journalist whose life and career has recently been on the skids. Blomkvist was obliged to resign from muckraking Stockholm magazine Millennium, after his probe into corrupt businessman Hans-Erik Wennerström (Ulf Friberg) blew up in his face, resulting in a libel conviction and an impending jail sentence.
Vanger’s proposition to Blomkvist: Investigate Harriet’s disappearance and apparent death, under the guise of writing a biography. In return, Vanger will not only pay Blomkvist handsomely, but also help him get revenge on Wennerström, whom Vanger also hates.Blomkvist has nothing better to do, although he does have a loyal and loving girlfriend in Erika Berger (Robin Wright Penn), his editor at Millennium, whom he’ll be obliged to leave behind for many months.
But he won’t want for company, albeit of the weird kind. Enter Salander, the woman with the fire-breathing tat, introduced as someone whom her co-workers don’t much like, and for good reasons — and not just because of her fondness for leathers and piercings of every variety. “She’s different,” her security-firm boss understates.
Salander’s abundant personality disorders, the cause of which are detailed in later chapters of the trilogy, have obliged her to become a ward of the state, under the too-close attention of her oily guardian, Bjurman (Yorick van Wageningen).
A subplot involving Salander’s eye-popping resolution of her status is one of the few areas where Fincher has pushed the violence beyond what Oplev did in the original Dragon Tattoo. Reznor’s and Atticus Ross’ score, another improvement from the original film, helps build the dire mood, and listen for a mordant riff on a certain film by Paul Thomas Anderson, a Fincher rival.
Salander is one messed-up gal — she lives on Happy Meals and caffeine, and wears a T-shirt reading “F — k You, You F — kng F — k” — but she also rocks a computer like Steve Jobs.Too bad that what she and Blomkvist are doing is mostly plowing through old paper library files and photographs, which plays as porn for diehard print lovers, but which doesn’t make for dazzling screen action.
Vanger’s family, described by the patriarch as “the most detestable collection of people that you will ever meet,” should fill the void. Alas, most of them are drier and flatter than a Swedish cracker, even the usually reliable Stellan Skarsgård, who plays the unctuous industrial heir Martin Vanger.
But what could anyone do with eye-rolling material like this? The villain is pointed out very early in the proceedings, something Fincher oddly underlines with a cat-torture scene (the violence happens off screen) that might as well be a flaming arrow of revelation.
“Why don’t people trust their instincts?” a character says.
Good question, but in the incendiary performance by Rooney Mara, one of the year’s best, you have all the incentive you need to drag out the Dragon Tattoo gun yet again.
Noomi Rapace was great as the original Salander; Mara goes her one better with a performance that is as disturbing and wounded as the character is meant to be.NEW YORK — David Fincher had thoughts of making The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo in Canada to save money on the production. “But they were short-lived,” the director said. Only shooting in Sweden would let him do justice to Stieg Larsson’s book, he said in Manhattan Saturday.
Also mentioned by the cast and crew of the thriller, which opens Tuesday, at the press day:Screenwriter Steve Zaillian on why his version of Mikael Blomkvist, played by Daniel Craig, does considerably less bed-hopping onscreen than he did in Larsson’s bestsellers: “I started to feel he was like Warren Beatty in Shampoo (Hal Ashby’s 1975 dramedy about a libidinous Hollywood hairdresser). I didn’t want him to be that.”
Fincher said he’d like to shoot books two and three in the Millennium trilogy series at the same time, although nobody connected with the film has been confirmed for The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. Both Craig and star Rooney Mara, who plays hacker Lisbeth Salander, said they’d like to reprise their roles. Fincher added that directors are rarely signed for sequels when making a first film (he hasn’t been) “because they want to make sure that you behave.”
Daniel Craig is giving the movie a solid review from an actor’s point of view: “I got in touch with David and I said it was one of the rare occasions of my career where that was the movie that we set out to make … I was very, very pleased.”Getting Led Zeppelin to approve the use of “Immigrant Song” over the opening credit sequence (sung by Karen O and produced by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross) wasn’t the uphill battle you’d imagine, given how reluctant Jimmy Page and Robert Plant are about their songs being used for commercial purposes. Said Fincher: “Led Zeppelin are very protective, as they should be. They have an amazing catalogue. They wanted to make sure that we respected it and it was our intention all along to communicate the idea we didn’t want to run it into the ground, we didn’t want to use it in every television spot. We wanted to pick specific places, the teaser and the title sequence to do it in.”
Daniel Craig was cast first for the movie as “the masculine centre of the film,” said Fincher, who sees him as a Robert Mitchum-like presence onscreen.
There’s so much smoking and coffee drinking in the books, Fincher considered opening every scene with a cup of coffee and a smouldering cigarette somewhere in the shot. But the cigarette count is way down from the books, said both Fincher and Mara. The actress had to learn to smoke when she got the part.
Christopher Plummer, who plays retired industrialist Henrik Vanger, who hires Blomkvist to solve the mystery of the disappearance of his great-niece, Harriet, joked with the press that they needed to speak up. “I’m 102 years old,” he quipped. For the record, the Canadian actor is 82.
Plummer has just been nominated for a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actor for Beginners. “It’s just because I’m so young to look at,” he replied when asked about his longevity in the business and recent accolades, including an Oscar nomination last year for The Last Station. “And cheap,” joked Stellan Skarsgard, who plays Martin Vanger in Dragon Tattoo. “I’m very lucky to have survived everything and come into my 80s somehow,” added Plummer. “I have a pulse, I assure you
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