Miss City Discovers: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo Review

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo Review


The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

            The much anticipated English version of the book turned movie, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, was released December 20th netting on their opening weekend $12.75 million.

James Bonds’ Daniel Craig played the lead role of Mikael Blomkvist, a disgraced journalist hired to solve the murder of a young girl that took place forty years ago.  The role which really stood unsurpassed was Lisbeth Salander, played by Rooney Mara. Mara plays an unreadable, troubled computer hacker, who Blomkvist seeks out to aid him in his search of what happened to Harriet Vanger. The director of the film was David Fincher, whose other works include Fight ClubThe Social Network and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Naturally, with titles like these under his belt, I imagined I’d be in for a treat on the evening I went out to see The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. And what a treat it was. Although the movie is a whopping two hours and thirty seven minutes long, I felt as if my brain was tuned in the entire time, attempting to figure out the bizarre disappearance Blomkvist and Salander were trying to unveil.

What keeps the audience on edge is the on-going mystery of what happened to Henrik Vanger’s (Christopher Plummer) niece, but also the back stories of Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander. Salander lives an extremely difficult and trapped life. Everything about her points to a background of disappointment and problems. She has black as onyx hair that cuts across her forehead like ice, deep, overpowering, dark makeup and baggy, dark clothing that screams dread.  The makeup and costume designers of this film should be commended. After seeing the film, I decided that it was Rooney Mara who was truly transformational in her role as Salander. She was extremely believable, and shock crosses most faces when told that Mara also played the girlfriend from Boston University in The Social Network.

The film is rated R for a reason; there are some very disturbing and brutally violent scenes as well as strong language.

The storyline is very effective; incorporating subplots and involving unlikely characters with each other always makes for a good flick. What makes the movie so captivating is that you’re held almost completely in the dark throughout the whole movie, until the end where everything comes together in one sensational final scene. This film was innovative, surprising, and a breath of fresh air. Where have all the classic “who done it?” mysteries gone? All I can say is that The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo brought it back, and with a bang.

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