Movie Review: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (US version)

Yep, another less-than-Christmasy review, haha. It's been a gritty Christmas all around (actually, it's been a wet winter here).

I haven't read the book or seen the Swedish version of this film, so I can't make comparisons -- though a good film should be able to stand on its own.

Quick run-down: Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig), a tarnished journalist, is hired by a retired CEO of a family corporation to investigate the disappearance (and possible murder) of his grand-niece Harriet, a 40-year-old mystery. Mikael teams up the asocial computer-hacker Lisbeth Salander (Roony Mara), and together, they dig up some nasty family secrets.

Yes, the content in this is very dark and disturbing. A major theme in the movie is violence against women, as we see Salander (not exactly "see", per se) anally raped by her guardian that the state issued to her (because apparently she was deemed "incapable" to take care of herself), as well as trying to catch a killer of women.

Though, this film isn't all gloom n' doom, there are some chuckles, and we watch Lisbeth's and Mikael's relationship bud. And Lisbeth's character was amazing, loved her because she never allowed herself to get knocked down. Yeah, I'm all for girl power and girls that can kick ass. But she also has layers to her, though she may portray a badass on the outside, there is a vulnerable side as we see she struggles against the state and in letting people into her life. The movie did an excellent job showing this as did the actress.

All the actors were good, actually. None of the roles felt pained or out of place. The soundtrack was also particularly good.
 
And if I may make a quick comparison to Black Swan, another disturbing film, while I enjoyed Portman's performance and the overall creepiness of the film, I never really felt anything for Portman's character. Whereas with Lisbeth, there was a determination that I admire and could see myself watching TGWTDT over and over again, despite the painful content. Black Swan I've only seen once that's good enough for me.  

To name a negative of TGWTDT, I found it hard to understand Daniel Craig at the beginning of the film, he seemed to mumble or the audio just wasn't capturing the actors words. But that was only an issue in the beginning.

But after seeing this film, I'm compelled to check out the foreign version as well as read the book (probably check it out at the library).

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars