On one level, "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" is simply an Agatha Christie story for Nine Inch Nails fans. You may think I'm joking, but think about it: an isolated island full of disgruntled relatives in a wealthy family, an unsolved murder with loads of potential suspects, and a sleuth who uncovers the secrets through sharp analysis of the facts at hand. The spin of course is that the sleuth is not the Gallic, mannered, mustachioed Hercule Poirot, but Nordic, bisexual Goth-girl Lisbeth Salander, a pallid hacker with piercings, tattoos and a wardrobe that consists entirely of black.
Based on the first of the "Millennium Trilogy" novels by Swedish journalist/author Stieg Larsson, "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" was already a cult hit in its 2009 Swedish film adaptation, and — rather predictably — nearly everyone who's seen the original says David Fincher's Hollywood remake isn't as good. In their opinion, the material has been toned down, and no one can top the feral, intense performance actress Noomi Rapace gave as the original Lisbeth.
I beg to differ: Fincher's "Dragon Tattoo" is plenty dark, and his casting savvy. Rooney Mara brings a wary, coiled tension to her Lisbeth, and while a bit cooler and less butch than the ferocious Rapace version, just watch her go all-out after a bag-snatcher twice her size. She embodies old-school punk, where the brittle, sod-off vibes she emits are as much about self-defense as self-negation. Playing Watson to her Holmes is Daniel Craig as investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist; this creates a certain frisson as that emblem of male virility, James Bond, finds himself outclassed by a girl half his age.