The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2011)

Ok, the basics.

David Fincher's adaptation of Stieg Larsson's thriller, starring Daniel Craig as an investigative reporter tasked with looking into the decades old death of a millionaire industrialist's niece, and Rooney Mara as Lisbeth Salander, a pretty mentally damaged computer hacker/researcher who assists him/does all the heavy lifting for him because he's not really that bright.

These are pretty great performances, but overall, the film has a problem, which is best seen in comparison with the earlier Swedish film. It's too short. That might be an odd thing to say about a film that's two hours and forty minutes, and actually longer than the Swedish cinema version. The problem is, the Fincher version wastes quite a bit of time. I say wastes, that's not fair, you can look at snow all you like, I'm not going to criticise a filmmaker for that. But if two hours and forty is what you have to play with, I think more of that time was needed on the dialogue.

If I may trivialise the original book for a moment, what this is, is a story of a dark secret from the past that has remained secret because a collection of very private and reticent people are reluctant to talk about it, and the reporter investigating it isn't even that sure he wants to know either, at least initially. In the Swedish version, this led to a lot of conversations like:

"Tell me about the girl"
"Can I get you a drink Mr Blomquist?"
"No, thank you, now, about the girl..."
"Ah go on. I'm having one."
"I'm fine for whiskey thanks."
"Ah you will. You will, you will, you will."
"Oh alright then."

...before getting on and talking about the girl. In the Fincher version, that scene goes.

"Tell me about the girl"
"Can I get you a drink Mr Blomquist?"
"Yes please."

Which then leads to scenes like:
"Tell me about the girl then"
"I'm very reluctant to tell you about that."
"Please?"
"Oh, alright, seeing as its you, Mr Bond."

Ultimately, it feels like it was made by someone who thought that the book was fine and all, but it was a bit *talky*, it had too many *words* in it. And I'm not going to be so cheap as to say that it was *all* style and *no* substance, but having seen a version that very much erred on the side of substance, I can't say that moving towards the style was the best treatment for the story.