The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo  (Rated R)  5 Stars

Hey, you know who is just excellent at moody and atmospheric films that show characters in sort of a bad light? Director David Fincher (Se7en, Fight Club)! Most of the time, the book is bet-ter than the movie, and an original foreign film is better than a big-budget American redo. In this case, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (158 well-chosen minutes) matches the original Swedish film, just as both films somehow manage to do justice to the first book in Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy.

Rooney Mara is brilliantly cast as Lisbeth Salander, and she ap-parently went method with the role — all those piercings are real. Considering the train wreck that Natalie Portman or Kiera Knightly would have been in this role, somebody in central casting deserves a nice end-of-year bonus. Daniel Craig is a great actor, and he does the role justice, but he also comes off as almost boyish when compared to Michael Nyqvist from the original film, which is not so much a misstep as a personal quibble with directorial choices. At least Fincher made the choice to keep the film’s setting in Sweden, even if all the characters are speaking English. The country itself is a character in the story, and forcing the film to take place in New England or something just would not have worked.

Mikael Blomkvist (Craig) is up against a professional wall, having tried to take down a wealthy businessman, only to be charged and convicted of libel when he is unable to back up his allegations. He is smoking a lot, and I would say shame on you Daniel Craig, but children shouldn’t be watching this anyway.

Broke and facing the loss of his professional reputation, he is approached by Dirche Frode (Steven Berkoff, who I last saw playing Victor Maitland in Beverly Hills Cop). Frode represents Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer), who wishes to hire him to solve the decades-old murder of his niece based on the strength of a background check performed by Lisbeth Salander (Mara). Blomkvist is reluc-tant at first, but agrees when he finds out that Vanger has information that will restore his journalistic reputation.

Meanwhile, Salander is assigned a legal guardian named Nils Bjurman (Yorick van Wageningen). Bjurman is every bit as evil as depicted in the books. While I give the actors credit for managing to film the intense scenes required, and acknowledge that one of the main themes of the trilogy is the violence men visit upon women, I find it distasteful that Fincher felt bound to mirror some of the more vicious choices made in the first film, and even exceed them by a bit. For a film that spends so much time alluding to violence against women without lingering over the details, I don’t see how including one of the most violent mainstream literary scenes around adds anything to an otherwise skillfully edited movie. For this, Fincher, go back to the ear slicing scene in Reservoir Dogs to see how you show violence without actually showing violence. I guess what I am saying is, the scene in the remake is even harder to watch.

Anyway, Blomkvist settles in to the Vanger estate, meeting the dramatis personae and learning the background to the case. It doesn’t take long for him to meet Vanger Industries CEO Martin Vanger (Stellan Skarsgård) and Cecilia Vanger (Geraldine James). It takes about 90 minutes to put Blomkvist and Salander in the same room, which is when things start moving quickly. Naturally, the two reach the same conclusion at the same time, putting one of them in danger just in time to be rescued by the other.

If you haven’t read the books or seen the Swedish trilogy, this is an excellent introduction … and you should definitely check them out just to see the different character choices.

Now showing at Wynnsong 7, Carmike 12 and Carmike Market Fair 15.