The decision to remake “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” for American audiences will be debated endlessly and passionately, but if anyone is to bring the story of Lisbeth Salander to life in the multiplexes, mercifully it’s David Fincher. His take on the material is moody and unhurried, marked by a star-making performance by Rooney Mara as the ass-kicking, bisexual girl in question.
Stieg Larsson’s densely-plotted “Millennium series” spawned a trilogy of films, starring actress Noomi Rapace as the titular character. This version covers the same material from the first Swedish film, with tweaks here and there.
Here, Daniel Craig is Mikael Blomkvist, a journalist who has just left the magazine he works for after he is sued for libel for an article he has written. Shortly after, he is hired by Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer), the head of a large, powerful Swedish family, to find out what happened to his young niece Harriet 40 years ago. She disappeared – almost literally – from their home and he believes her murderer could have been in the family.