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The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)
Rate:
4
Viewed:
9/26
9/26:
I hate the title: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
When the source was revealed, it's just an ordinary, ugly tattoo on a girl's back, signifying nothing. There
have been cooler titles that represented something epic such as:
The Boy Who Could Fly,
The Man Who Would Be King, and
I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang. I would've been all
right with the original as envisioned by the author of the book: Män som hatar kvinnor which is
Swedish for Men Who Hate Women.
David Fincher is a competent director, but he makes overrated films.
Seven, Fight Club,
Zodiac, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo...they have common traits
when it comes to storytelling: strong and absorbing but pretentious, overwrought, and faulty in logic. The last
three are also too long.
When I looked up the internet for any Oscars received, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo won one for Best
Editing. Are you fucking kidding me? That was horribly done which felt like three movies due to the parallel
threads and the pointless twenty-minute appendage at the end. With an hour left, the editor suddenly realized
he was running out of time and had to speed up the film. Meanwhile, I couldn't keep up with many
characters' names.
My advice? Get rid of the backstory about Lisbeth Salander and just present her as a research assistant for
Mikael Blomkvist. That way, the gross rape scenes won't have to be shown. Speaking of them, I could
tell that was coming during the second visit. For a hacker who could move a great deal of money, did she really
need to ask for it from the legal guardian? A laptop replacement isn't even essential; just go to the library.
Another mistake is setting the story in Sweden. I say this because nobody speaks the language despite the
signs being in Swedish everywhere. That's when I started to wonder if I was watching an American remake of a
foreign film which turned out to be the case just like The Vanishing
(Spoorloos), Nightwatch
(Nattevagten), and
The Talented Mr. Ripley
(Plein soleil). In most cases, the original is far better, and that's why
I'm motivated to check out the 2009 picture.
Understandably, it's impossible to review The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo without talking about one of
the most bizarre characters in cinema history: Lisbeth Salander. Even Billy Redden can be safely let off the
hook for being born this way. If you don't know who that is, he's famous for the inbreed look and the "Dueling
Banjos" scene in Deliverance.
In spite of Lisbeth wanting to be portrayed as a super badass female and all that, she's quite comical.
Even her lack of eyebrows is cringeworthy. If I met Lisbeth for real, that's the first thing I
will tell her, but I know she'll blankly stare at me and say, "These don't grow." Yet during the bank
transactions, she put on fake eyebrows that were passable enough to the naked eye. Lisbeth and
Blomkvist also get my vote as the worst cinematic pair ever. No wonder why he had to dump her by coming to
his fucking senses as evinced by the ending.
Yes, the mystery can feel mildly interesting with another Morgan Freeman substituted for Brad Pitt, but once the
cat is let out of the bag, it suddenly becomes at once blah and absurd. Who the hell takes so many pictures
of one scene as if it's a movie? Google is the worst place to do research; it's impossible to find useful
information, especially from the 60's. You're better off with LexisNexis and other research databases in the
academic world. Most of all, books are where the gold is. Earlier, I quizzically looked at the opening
credits when Steven Zaillian's name appeared because he won the Oscar for
Schindler's List. Once the Nazi themes came into play, I could see why.
Then again, he did do Hannibal.
All in all, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is an overlong poor combination of
Smilla's Sense of Snow, Seven
minus the murder scenes, and Don't Breathe.