The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

Nerd alert

(Warning: spoilers)

Basically the hipster DaVinci Code, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is David Fincher covering himself, delivering limp rehashes of Zodiac, Seven, and The Social Network, without any of the energy, flair or originality of those films. The plot is boring, the thrills nonexistent. The one chase scene is two vehicles on an empty road that lasts about a minute. Then the car flips over and explodes and everyone goes home. Daniel Craig is insanely miscast as a mega-nerd who bumbles around and says things like “Yeah, I’m a bit out of shape” while displaying a washboard stomach and looking like Daniel Craig. He also has multiple sex partners in the film who are all, “C’mon and fuck me, Daniel Craig!” which of course. The character of Lisbeth Salander is more interesting but the film doesn’t trust the viewer to believe that she would have any interest in solving a mystery even though she is introduced as someone who sleuths for a living so she has a lurid rape scene that is supposed to function as the tie between Salander’s interest in Daniel Craig’s research into a missing girl. Salander’s natural intuitive sense and foresight displayed at the very beginning  of the film when dealing with other plot points that occur at the end are ignored because you gots to have that rape scene apparently. Salander and Daniel Craig spend a lot of time staring at their computers and, unlike The Social Network, this bored me. A killer is eventually revealed and he talks forever before being dispatched because he couldn’t just kill somebody, could he? No, he has to explain himself. Then Lisbeth buys Daniel Craig a jacket and the clerk is all, “Nice jacket” and Lisbeth says, “It’s for a friend.” Sadly, Daniel Craig is back with his girlfriend who is actually married to someone else so Lisbeth throws the jacket in the trash and rides off on her bike AND THAT IS THE END OF THE MOVIE. Does anyone know if he finds the jacket in the trash at the beginning of part 2 and realizes what a jerk he’s been?

I’ve seen some reviews that praise the rape scene which is fucked up, right? If you must have a rape scene in your movie(must you? I doubt it) then don’t mess around with how terrible rape is. Irreversible is pretty much the last word on movie rape scenes because it just sits the camera down for between five to ninety minutes(give or take) and just watches a horrible event unfold. The style is the lack of style but it never takes away from the awful power of the event. Irreversible forces the viewer to reconcile with this terrible act. After sitting through that, the rape no longer functions as just another plot point but a damaging, awful life event that scars the characters forever. In Dragon Tattoo it’s just the impetus to get to the cool revenge scene. Salander before and after is unchanged. The scene is pointless. I rest my case.