Review of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

So, this is my first post! Recently, I've proclaimed myself a bit of a movie-buff.  (I'll come clean and tell you that it's mostly only been since the summer of 2011...I have seen a movie every weekend in the theater since the beginning of September, if that gives you a better idea.)

Let's get to the review, shall we?

TGWTDT was so much more than I had expected it to be.  Walking in with no previous information beyond the previews, I had no clue that I was in for the dark thrill ride that this film turned out to be.

The plot starts out with a defamed journalist's (Mikael Blomkvist (played by Daniel Craig)) life during a time of great scandal and one starts to wonder how this can lead to what the previews have portrayed.

I won't lie and tell you that I absolutely loved it from the beginning to the end. It took some work and serious acting skills, which I was certainly impressed with by the end.

It really starts to pick up after he meets Henrik Vanger (the role played by Christopher Plummer) hires Mikael to do some investigative work on the death of his beloved niece.  The anti-semitic and Nazi themes of European history pour into the mystery as he works on the investigation and brings in the infamous Lisbeth for help.

What captured my attention the most about this film was absolutely the actual girl with the dragon tattoo. Rooney Mara, who plays the dark Lisbeth Salander, was phenomenal!  This girl, who plays Mark Zuckerburg's girlfriend in the beginning of The Social Network, becomes a completely unexpected character.  She, as an actress, and Lisbeth mesh so well in to a brutal yet delicate framework of a puzzling character.

The plot, as a whole, was really among the very best I've seen in the past couple years.  It is a mystery, love story (stories?), horror, suspense, action-thriller film.  I don't want to spoil the plot for anyone...but it is must-see.  Its scenes absolutely burst with, what I believe is, the author's original intentions for the story-line.  There were several instances where I could almost read the words that would have been written in a particular chapter.  It was a beautiful film and I fully appreciate the work of the author and the screen-play adapters.  

I have heard that the second film does not feature Lisbeth as much, which is absolutely devastating to me!  The end of the first film begins the second novel, I believe, so I am curious about how it will all turn out on the screen.





For more information, please visit IMDb's page on the film.

Thanks for reading.