Though it takes its time getting going, David Fincher's remake of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" is a slow burn that ends up as one of the most interesting thrillers of the year. Even if it's a good 20 minutes too long, as it seems most Fincher movies are, "Dragon Tattoo" is a mysterious, well-made film that doesn't hesitate to delve into truly dark territory that could make the faint of heart a little woozy. As the tattoo covered superhacker Lisbeth Salander, Rooney Mara is also pitch-perfect, giving us an exciting new type of hero who will be welcomed back for future adventures that plunge into the darkness of mankind.
After getting sued in court for libel, the biggest of all journalistic sins, Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) is in need of a new direction at the beginning of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo." Stuck in a lackluster relationship with his married editor Erika (Robin Wright), Mikael seems to be on the downside of his life after a successful run as a respected journalist. When he's accused of running away and giving up in the wake of his court case, Mikael sheepishly agrees.
Luckily for Mikael, though, he's given a fresh start when an enigmatic Swedish business tycoon asks him to write his memoirs and help solve a four-decade old family mystery involving a missing girl and a slew of murders. As Henrik Vanger, veteran actor Christopher Plummer is prim and proper, a man who Mikael believes he should be able to trust. Henrik openly denounces the rest of his family for being former Nazis, but does he ever really say that he isn't one? For Mikael, who is on the verge of ruin, he doesn't have the luxury of turning Henrik down, even if we sense that he could be getting in way over his head. Intercut in the story of Mikael is the life of Lisbeth, an odd but brilliant investigator who has a funny way of hacking into the emails of anyone she takes a personal interest in. Lisbeth can slip from one person's life to the next with ease, though her own life is a mess of malnutrition, anger and complete mistrust of anyone around her. With spiked hair, a head filled with piercings and a menacing scowl, Lisbeth is only comfortable in keeping her distance and sliding in and out of the shadows. At one point, she is warned that an ankle tattoo is going to be extremely painful, a bit of news she accepts with only a tiny shrug of her shoulders and no change in facial expression. Clearly she's used to pain.
But there is only so much pain that Lisbeth is willing to put up with. A ward of the state, Lisbeth must coddle the man in charge of her personal funds, exchanging sexual favors for the money she believes she should have access to in the first place. When the sinister Bjurman (Yorick van Wageningen) pushes her way too far, she turns the tables back on him in one of the most cringe worthy scenes of the year, one befitting a manipulative rapist who clearly had it coming. Though she may have worn her piercings and tattoos as a mere warning before, clearly Lisbeth is no longer willing to passively accept her fate.
Now in full control of her life again, Lisbeth ends up being the perfect person to help Mikael solve the Vanger family mystery. Though Mikael is polite almost to a fault, Lisbeth has no problems pushing buttons when she's trying to get information, making them a dangerous combination that seems to be getting answers that most of the family would rather leave covered. But while Lisbeth has a hardened dark side of her own, she also has a devastating soft side for anyone she deems worthy of it.
While most thrillers these days seem to be obsessed with a big twist, "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" does a great job of not tipping its hand and finds a more practical solution, one that doesn't have to be a mind-bending twist that comes completely out of the blue. There is even a great little scene in which the killer reflects that he was able to trap Mikael solely by Mikael's desire to avoid being socially impolite. Though Lisbeth is cold and cynical enough to not be pushed around, Mikael in many ways has the naivety of a boy, which doesn't play with a family that still seems to be paying tribute to the legacy of the Third Reich.
In the process, Daniel Craig does a phenomenal job of shedding his James Bond hero persona, playing Mikael as a broken journalist who lacks confidence and needs someone like Lisbeth to help him navigate a dark world he's not really ready for. But though Craig is a good fit, this is still Rooney Mara's film. Mara is excellent at keeping up the hardened protective shell Lisbeth has created to leave the world at a distance, though she's capable of small acts of pure kindness to the few that she's able to trust. One sardonic stare from Mara and you should be able to figure out that Lisbeth is not someone to be trifled with.
Though Fincher brought a good tone to last year's "The Social Network," he's at his best when he's wading in the dark side of human psychology, as he did for "Fight Club," "Seven" and the severely underrated "Zodiac." Here, he's resisted the urge to make an autopilot revamping of the Swedish original, filling the film with brutal details and a dark overtone that fits the world that Lisbeth inhabits. After seeing so many cinematic heroes cut from the same cloth, it's nice to see a true original like Lisbeth Salander.
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June 12, 2026 17:14 ET Major central bank action was the focus this week in economic news. The European Central Bank became the first major central bank to move in response to the rising inflationary pressures in the backdrop of the conflict in the Middle East. In North America, the U.S. inflation and trade data as well as Canada’s central bank decision gained attention. The Chinese trade data was the main news in Asia.