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Girl With The Dragon Tattoo US
2011
(David Fincher)
18A, 158 minutes
Daniel Craig, Rooney Mara and Christopher Plummer
The elderly millionaire Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer), cut off from the mainland on the family island, yearns to know how his beloved niece Harriet died 40 years ago. Because apparently neither she nor her body left the island on the day she disappeared, and no trace has ever been found, suspicion rests on those who were there that day, in particular other Vanger relatives whose houses overlook Henrik's from their own isolation. They provide a snaky group of suspects. Many seem involved in corruption. Some have pasts with Nazi connections. Mikael arranges their photos and newspaper clippings and file cards in a collage pinned to a wall and connected with red lines of speculation, but his threads of suspicion seem to lead to … everyone. In this film more than the original, the stories of Mikael and Lisbeth are kept separate for an extended period. We learn about the girl's state-appointed guardian (Yorick van Wageningen), who abused her, stole from her and terrorized her. Her attempts to avenge herself would make a movie of their own. Zaillian's script comes down to a series of fraught scenes between his leads and a distinctive gallery of supporting characters, given weight by Stellan Skarsgard, Robin Wright and the iconic London actor Steven Berkoff. These people inhabit a world with no boring people. By providing Mikael with his own small cottage on the island, Henrik Vanger isolates him in a vulnerable situation, which sinks in as he realizes he's probably sharing the island with a murderer. There's also the problem of why Henrik continues to receive watercolors of wildflowers on his birthday, a tradition that his niece began and inexplicably has continued after her death. If you subtract computers, geeks, goth girls, nose piercings, motorcycles and dragon tattoos, what we have at the bottom is a classic Agatha Christie plot.