BrianSez's Review

Summary - Very Good 3.5

In this gritty, dreary but fast paced remake, Daniel Craig is a disgraced journalist who gets a gig searching for a wealthy man’s (Plummer) niece who disappeared 40 years ago. In parallel with all that we get to know Rooney Mara’s troubled grunge girl with a knack for hacking and finding information. The two eventually get paired up (in more ways than one), and the result is great sleuthing, great action, some pretty raw/disturbing events – but all in all a very good action/thriller.

Acting - Good 3.0

Daniel Craig is a good fit for the focused Mikael Blomkvist. Dedicated to an outcome despite opportunities to take an easier way out. Rooney Mara is a standout as the battered kid Lisbeth Salander. Christopher Plummer is his usual big-screen-presence self. I also liked Stellan Skarsgard as a psycho bad guy. Also not a bad job by Yorick van Wageningen as the sadistic Bjurman.

Film - Very Good 3.5

I didn’t compare to the original – which I never made it through. At face value, I think it is a great job at capturing the dreariness of the surroundings and the in-bred darkness of the characters involved. And through it all, old-fashioned good storytelling and tight action and thrills.

Edge - Horrid 4.2

Two rape scenes: guy gets girl, and girl gets guy back. The latter makes swallowing the former very slightly easier.

Reality - Surreal 2.1

2 Comments

• Wick Jan 15, 2012 10:56AM

  Regarding Wick’s Review
  Good point, Randy. I probably would have rated it higher, though the phoniness of an English language movie set in Sweden probably would have still rankled.

• Randy Jan 15, 2012 10:19AM

  Regarding Wick’s Review
  Very nice review, Wick. A lot of this review is based off of a comparison to the original Swedish flick. I wonder if and how your opinions may have differed if you had seen Fincher’s “Girl” before the Swedish original, as was the case with me.

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