The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)

User Review

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  Barneyonmovies

  8 / 10

  WHAT I LIKED: David Fincher and Steven Zaillian's 'The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,' follows a journalist (Daniel Craig) and computer hacker (Rooney Mara) hired by a Swedish business mogul (Christopher Plummer) to investigate the historic disappearance of a young girl on his family island. This unravels a web of violence and abuse, as they not only discover antisemitic crimes stretching back years based on satanic verses, but hacker Lisbeth is also victim to brutal sexual abuse herself at the hands of her legal guardian.
  
  In some ways, all that darkness makes the film about as black as a noir mystery thriller could get, but it also has two largely good-hearted central characters. Daniel Craig's Mikael may be a bit of a bachellor, and he has just been fired from his job after being defamed by a company he was investigating, but he also has a dogged determination to seeking justice. Then Rooney Mara's Lisbeth is similarly steafast in her convictions, not least because of the abuse she's suffered herself.
  
  That makes it a ruthlessly engaging mystery which pits the greatest evil against two characters you root deeply for, and that's only emphasised by the cold, grey atmosphere that extends from the sweeping landscape shots to the grungy streets and apartments, as well as the way Fincher manipulates tension in his ever-expert way.
  
  WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE: The score is very intrusive and annoying.
  
  VERDICT: 'The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,' has two righteous characters face down some of the world's greatest evils to magnificently gripping results.

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