The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
David Fincher’s adaptation of Stieg Larsson's novel stars Rooney Mara as the computer hacker and Daniel Craig as the journalist who join forces to find a missing woman.
Directed by David Fincher
(R)
****
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
![https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516-320-80.jpg)
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
David Fincher’s creepy take on the popular Stieg Larsson novel is superior to the 2009 Swedish original, said Rex Reed in The New York Observer. Though its most violent scenes are nearly unwatchable, it’s a “technically superb” work, “a master class in sinister style.” You simply “can’t take your eyes off Rooney Mara,” said David Denby in The New Yorker. Though it takes a while before Mara’s Goth-styled computer hacker finally teams up with Daniel Craig’s disgraced journalist to help find a woman who went missing 40 years earlier, Mara “makes every scene that she appears in jump.” Her Lisbeth Salander is both “anti-social and intensely sexual,” both vulnerable and “overequipped” to exact revenge on every bully or abuser she encounters. The film retains the book’s “somewhat lumpy structure,” including its anticlimactic ending, said Owen Gleiberman in Entertainment Weekly. Yet Mara “redeems” even the unnecessary coda, and Fincher makes the rest of the film electrifying by “turning the audience into addicts of the forbidden.” We spend all 158 minutes craving to unearth “the sick and twisted things we can’t see.”
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Create an account with the same email registered to your subscription to unlock access.
-
Did Kamala Harris kill brat?
Talking Point Pop culture phenomenon co-opted by presidential candidate sparks claims brat is over
By Jamie Timson, The Week UK Published
-
Paris Olympics: will it be a success?
Today's Big Question Organisers hope the 'spectacle' of the 2024 Games will lift the cloud of negativity that has hung over the build-up
By Chas Newkey-Burden, The Week UK Published
-
Quiz of The Week: 20 - 26 July
Puzzles and Quizzes Have you been paying attention to The Week's news?
By The Week Staff Published