REVIEW: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2011 Remake)

Okay, let’s get it out of the way up front – this movie was only made because Americans are too stupid to read subtitles. There. I said it. Now, are we uptight prudes who are going to condemn this great film because of that dire fact, or are we appreciative of masterful cinema by one of the greatest directors in the business?

Director: David Fincher

Starring: Daniel Craig, Rooney Mara

Website: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001745/

Yes, I’m certainly a David Fincher fanboy, and I love pretty much everything he’s done (okay – Panic Room was pretty shit). He’s proven himself a master of several genres and adaptable to pretty much any storytelling template he puts his mind to. His shots are stylish and hard-hitting, and the way he conveys a story is just as good now as it was back in ’96 when he put out Se7en.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo maybe didn’t need a remake just three short years after its original Swedish debut, and it’s made even more dubious by the fact that everyone in this film speaks with a heavy Swedish accent anyway – begging the question as to why they didn’t just touch up the original film and give it some DVD extras or something – but the inarguable fact is, this is an awesome story. Who cares if it’s necessary or not? This is just another alternative along with the original book and the original movie, and there is always room for more quality, gritty, hard-assed detective stories.

This isn’t a shot for shot remake either, and contains fistfuls of great atmospheric shots and nifty storytelling devices. Really all that’s changed is that this isn’t as raw as the original, and feels much more fine-tuned and professional, much more American-style polished, which is neither good nor bad – just different. Your mileage may vary. Me, I think it’s fine, and the whole thing feels more epic and immense. The original was great for its odd, scrappy rawness, but this is still a very viable new direction.

The story remains intact, a dual journey of a disgraced journalist who accepts a strange assignment to look into the disappearance and murder of a young girl 40 years in the past and of a cold and violent but brilliant young woman on a search for connection. Daniel Craig has never much impressed me before, but he does a great job here and really gives an intense, vehement performance as Mikael Blomqvist. Rooney Mara had a lot to live up to as Lisbeth Salander compared to original actress Noomi Rapace, but she does an awesome job and captures the essence of the character perfectly. She is cold, calculating and subtly angry, but not without the hints of a more emotional core below the surface.

Christopher Plummer as Henrik Vanger is really excellent and so is Stellan Skarsgard as Martin – even better than the original in the latter case, as he is vicious and commanding. We don’t get to see as many flashbacks in this version, which I actually like better, as it lets the story flow as a more cohesive whole. They also changed the ending twist, and that I was not expecting (I won’t spoil it here for you), but it does make a little more sense now, as opposed to the wild original version. The story is still a chilling and sprawling social commentary on the secret abuse of women and how little society does anything about it.

People complain endlessly about Hollywood being nothing but a chain of remakes and sequels nowadays, and sometimes they have a point (witness the endless stream of uninspired horror remakes), but other times I think they’re being too nitpicky. Films are the modern equivalent of campfire folk tales, and they have been ever since their initiation in the early 20th century. They can be told and re-told as many times as is the storyteller’s whim, and with a good, confident voice and a strong vision, it’s interesting at the very least to see what each new director adds to the tale. Fincher’s Dragon Tattoo is a grade-A film. Go see it.

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The Debt (2011)

Starring: Helen Mirren, Sam Worthington, Jessica Chastain

Director: John Madden

IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1226753/

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Debt_(2011_film)

Well, the summer has come to an end, and with it, the summer blockbuster season. So everyone is either sad (it brought us "Super 8") or breathing a sigh of relief (it also brought us "The Smurfs"). But if you are a film buff such as myself, it is simply a changing of the seasons as we head into the fall and see the "serious" movies (i.e. "the ones you are supposed to like"). One of the first ones up is tiled "The Debt." Here is the original trailer for it:

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

Apparently the film was expected to come out in early August, but there was a lot of behind the scenes tension between the producers so they struggled to make the deadline. As a result, the final product ended up being an ill-conceived compromise that no one liked.

So it was completely revamped and this was made instead...

Based upon the Israeli film of the same name, its about three members of Mossad who are put in charge of capturing Dieter Vogel, a Nazi war criminal who is living in 1960s Berlin. However, they soon find out that capturing a Nazi war criminal is not as easy as it sounds. Events go awry and it comes back to haunt them more than 30 years later.

This film is very well done. A mixture between a political and psychological thriller, it follows three people as they come face to face with a monster and it becomes questionable as to who is the real hostage in the situation. The Mossad agents cannot simply kill the guy and then go about their merry way; they have to capture him, get him out of Soviet-controlled East Berlin and then send him to Israel where he will face justice. In order to do this, they have to get up close and personal with him. That job comes down to the only female agent, Rachel Singer, (played in her younger year by Jessica Chastain). Since Vogel is now working as an OB/GYN, she poses as a woman who claims to have fertility problems and needs his help. That's right: she has to get inspected by a Nazi gynecologist, who during the war was known as "The Surgeon of Birkenau," and was responsible for experimenting on millions of children in ways that lead to their horrible, agonizing deaths. Awkward...

The highlight of the movie is Vogel, played by Jesper Christensen. He is...well, evil. Very, very evil. He is not one of those people who is simply misunderstood and turns out to be a flesh and blood human being when you meet him. He is just downright despicable, has no redeeming quality, and deserves everything he gets and more. However, the Mossad has to be professional about the whole situation. When their get-away plan falls apart, they hide out in an apartment building where they keep him tied up, taking turns feeding him, shaving him, etc. He repays their diligence by being as difficult as possible, behaving like a fussy five year old. He also makes a number of highly disturbing comments about how weak and selfish the Jews were during the Holocaust and remain the same today. Did I mention that Singer lost her mother during the war and fellow agent David Peretz (played in his younger years by Sam Worthington) lost his entire family because of the Final Solution? Yeah, try dealing with this guy when you have that kind of tragic personal history! I do not think that Christensen will win an Oscar for his role since the Academy might be reluctant, for the second time in three years, to give the Best Supporting Actor award to a guy who played a sadistic Nazi, but he at least deserves to be nominated.

The focus of the film is basically about unfinished business. While the three are cheered in the present day, it becomes clear that something happened three decades ago that they are not proud of. As the mystery unravels, it shows what it is like to hide the truth for the greater good but also what kind of problems it can cause for those who bear it. The fact that these people are already saddled with the burden of living in the shadow of one of the worst events in human history only adds to the emotional pull of the story.

The film is very solid. The acting by Chastain, Mirren, and everyone else is strong (I have never been much of a fan of Worthington, but even he manages a convincing performance), the transitions between the two time periods is handled very smoothly, and it even has a few good actions scenes. It is just good all around. Okay, fine, the ending was kind of dumb. Not from a story-telling perspective or anything, but the way it is executed. I cannot go into too much detail without spoiling it, but let's just say that it is supposed to be this big dramatic scene that will draw a conclusion to the misery that has haunted the main characters, but it ends up looking unrealistic and kind of silly. But as I said, it does not ruin the story itself, so I can forgive the movie for this relatively minor error. Oh, and the scene with Mirren in the newsroom at night also dragged on a bit, but that is not worth complaining about that much.

Overall, I enjoyed it. For those who are wondering, it is not as quite as good as "Munich" but that is a little unfair since, despite the fact that they have a similar subject matter (and Ciaran Hinds happens to be in both of them), they are different movies in terms of their focus. Either way, it is a good way to start off the Oscar season and a good film to watch at any point, period. I recommend it.

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