Mara colors 'Tattoo' with dark vengeance
Lisbeth Salander, alias "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," ranks as the greatest female movie character of the 21st century - so far, of course.
Our first glimpse of Lisbeth Salander is one of quiet shock. A petite young woman, she swaddles herself in tight black leather that gives her a reptilian look, complemented by a mohawk haircut, pierced lip, pierced ear, pierced nose and pierced brow. And those are just the parts we can see.
Everything about Lisbeth Salander screams damaged goods, and David Fincher's blistering new thriller "Dragon Tattoo" shows us how they were damaged, first by an abusive father she finally sets on fire, then by a predatory pig who controls her finances as an adult ward of the state.
Lisbeth is also a computer genius with an off-the-charts intellect - a Mark-Zuckerberg-to-the-10th-degree level intellect. The character's combustible combination of rage and Hannibal Lecter brilliance is perfectly rendered by actress Rooney Mara who recreates Lisbeth as a walking human hand grenade - with the pin pulled.
An obsessive, meticulous researcher, Lisbeth is hired to assist Stockholm-based magazine journalist Mikael Blomkvist (007 star Daniel Craig, with extra poundage added).
He has just been taken to the cleaners on a libel case against a corrupt Swedish business mogul because Blomkvist couldn't prove published allegations of malfeasance.
Despite his public disgrace, Blomkvist finds employment with Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer), the patriarch of a wealthy family who own an entire island. Vanger wants the journalist to reopen a more than 40-year-old missing persons case and find out what happened to his vanished teenage niece Harriet.
The missing girl's brother Martin (Stellan Skarsgard) offers his assistance, but downplays any chance of success at solving the case. Meanwhile, Blomkvist and Lisbeth conduct their investigation on the level of a modern-day Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, albeit with Mac books (and a sudden sexual encounter) as they discover systemic depravity on a scale never fathomed in an Arthur Conan Doyle story.
"Dragon Tattoo" is repulsively dark, seedy and deserving of its hard "R" rating as it explores the squalid evil thriving just below the surface of proper Swedish society.
Normally, the material in "Dragon Tattoo" would barely rate above sleazy exploitation, but Fincher - director of "Seven" and "The Social Network" - pumps the story with style and intelligence, accompanied by a chilling vision of a cold, near-monochromatic world of blues and grays that only pop with color in flashbacks to Harriet's youth.
Fincher's film, adapted by ace screenwriter Steven Zaillian, is a far superior remake of the internationally popular (and far cheaper) Swedish movie based on Stieg Larsson's posthumously published "Millennium Trilogy." (The sequels "The Girl Who Played With Fire" and "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest" are coming.)
In the Swedish films, Noomi Rapace (now starring in "Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows") brought a glimmer of empathy to her fiery Lisbeth.
Not so with Mara. After being victimized by a system that protects evil men, Mara's dark and defiant Lisbeth prepares to go Howard Beale on the world as a feminist avenging angel, a "Hellraiser" Cenobite with no limits to her vengeful savagery.
And the cinema is safe no more.
“The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”
★ ★ ★ ½
Starring: Daniel Craig, Rooney Mara, Christopher Plummer, Stellan Skarsgard, Robin Wright
Directed by: David Fincher
Other: Columbia Pictures release. Rated R for language, nudity, sexual situations, violence. 160 minutes