The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Rating: 1/5

I love mysteries. As a kid I read pretty much every Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot story, and more recently I've explored the works of Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and Georges Simenon. The downside of this passion is that mystery TV shows and movies are transparent to me. I spot red herrings and plot twists very fast, and it's hard not to get bored after I do. With that ladies and gentlemen: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

Disgraced journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) is hired by dying billionaire Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer) to find the reason behind the disappearance of his beloved niece twenty years ago. Henrik believes she was murdered by a family member, and Mikael has to figure out who. Meanwhile, antisocial goth-chic P.I. Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara) conducts her own investigation while under the thumb of a corrupt social worker.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is two hours and forty-five minutes long, and a lot of it could've been cut. There are so many plot points, sequences, and bits of dialogue that have absolutely nothing to do with the plot it's astounding. I guessed the bad guy around half an hour in, but even if I hadn't I could still count the maguffins on both hands. David Fincher's tense direction and Trent Reznor's awesome soundtrack work well together, but can't save the film from feeling extremely flat. The acting is fine, except that Daniel Craig is the only Brit is Swedish.

There is a rape scene in this movie. It involves Rooney Mara, and it is one of the most vile, tasteless, and exploitive scenes since "I Spit on Your Grave." It is drawn out to an excruciating degree, and has nothing to do with anything. This scene kills the film. I am not upset because it's graphic. I am upset because David Fincher made a choice to focus on Rooney Mara's sexiness while her character is anally raped and please the lowest common denominator.

This is a bad mystery. Its plot is faux-complex, there's no character development, the conclusion is ludicrous, and it's boring. Half of it makes NO sense, the whole thing is bland and pretentious, and it ignores the work films like Bridesmaids did for women in cinema. The only compliment I have is for Rooney Mara; she is fantastic as Lisbeth, and I can't wait to see her in better movies in the future. For now I'm just sorry she has to be associated with movies like this.