The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo will keep you awake through all of its two and a half hours of mind boggling mystery, violence, and sex, with no effort at all. Though this tale is definitely not a family flick, nor should it be seen by anyone under the age of seventeen, it makes people think about the human beings they come into contact with on a day to day basis.

As said by A. O. Scott in his review of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, “The animating force in Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy — incarnated on screen first by Noomi Rapace and now, in David Fincher’s adaptation of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” by Rooney Mara — Lisbeth is an outlaw feminist fantasy-heroine, and also an avatar of digital antiauthoritarianism.”

The plot keeps the audience on their toes through the numerous amounts of murders while the rape and family dysfunction keeps everyone in the theatre stunned into silence. However, the audience does seem prone to making satisfied sounds when a few of the unsavory characters get a taste of their own medicine throughout the film.

The main character, and girl with the dragon tattoo, Lisbeth (played by Rooney Mara), gives everyone a different hero to look up to. She is in no way anyone’s ideal role model, but she does feed the need for a more realistic outcast turned hero in society than any vampire or werewolf ever could.

A. O. Scott gives a good characterization of Lisbeth in his article on the movie:

“Her appeal arises from a combination of vulnerability and ruthless competence. Lisbeth can hack any machine, crack any code and, when necessary, mete out righteous punitive violence, but she is also a lost and abused child. And Ms. Mara captures her volatile and fascinating essence beautifully. Hurt, fury and calculation play on her pierced and shadowed face. The black bangs across her forehead are as sharp and severe as an obsidian blade, but her eyebrows are as downy and pale as a baby’s. Lisbeth inspires fear and awe and also — on the part of Larsson and his fictional alter ego, the crusading journalist Mikael Blomkvist (played in Mr. Fincher’s film by Daniel Craig) — a measure of chivalrous protectiveness.

She is a marvelous pop-culture character, stranger and more complex than the average superhero and more intriguing than the usual boy wizards and vampire brides. It has been her fate, unfortunately, to make her furious, inspiring way through a series of plodding and ungainly stories.”

This movie may be disturbing for some, and a piece of art work for another, but you’ll never know if you don’t check it out for yourself. There are too many interlaced details to give in a short review, so go see the movie and decide whether you love it, hate it, or think it should never be shown in another movie theatre ever again. I personally loved it, and was creeped out at the same time.