The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

David Fincher is one hell of a director.

"7even"

"Fight Club"

"Zodiac"

"The Social Network"

What a set of films.

However...one has to remember that in between each of those films Fincher also delivered;

"The Game"

"Panic Room"

"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"

And now his remake of "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo".

Fincher giveth and Fincher taketh.

The novel which has now served as the source material for two films is (whisper it) rotten and about as close to literature as anything by Dan Brown.

It's like Harry Potter for big people...not very good, a bit diverting on a long train/plane journey and it lets you convince people that you are a "reader".

The original movie version was reviewed by me here and I stand by every single word of that.

This version has also been receiving rave reviews but the truth of the matter is that you cannot make a silk purse out of a sows ear.

The whole thing is so outrageous that if it didn't include "that" scene then it would be sitting alongside the likes of "Twilight" and "I Am Number Four" as teen-girl fodder.  Salander is the sort of superhero that boxroom rebels of the female persuasion would love to be like and that their boyfriends would like to be with.  She's a computer whiz, she's got a wacky haircut, she don't take no shit from nobody and she plays by her own rules.

The problem is that both films do contain "that" scene...where Salander takes a terrible but justifiable revenge on a man who has raped her.  That means that the sort of audience who could buy into the nonsense that bulks out the rest of the running time can't see it.

The mystery of the missing girl is resolved very neatly but one can't help but feel that the whole thing could have been solved a lot quicker...both on screen and in the "real world" of the story.  I mean, forty years to figure out that "Harriet" is still alive?  Really?  Only the combination of a disgraced journalist and an autistic cyber-punk could work this one out?

So, a film about child abusing, women hating, murdering, psychopathic, Nazi sympathising, multi-millionaire Swedes and a deranged, man hating/man loving, rapist torturing, genius/idiot savant, cyber-punk AGAIN but this time in English and with the added bonus of the opening title sequence looking like a video for a Marilyn Manson single.

In every way, pointless.