The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)

Back in early 2010, the Swedish film of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” – original onscreen title “Men Who Hate Women” – was released in the United States. I loved the grisly Euro thriller about a disgraced journalist teaming with an emotionally scarred female hacker to solve a 40-year-old murder. Now the Americanized remake (re-adaptation?) arrives from director David Fincher, still set in Sweden, but with bigger names. Daniel Craig is the journalist, and Rooney Mara (“Social Network”) is Lisbeth, the hacker. This rock-solid take has a dark chilly mood to spare, and presents a more complex Lisbeth, a woman who has cut herself off from the world, calculating and scarily brilliant, but prone to still sadly eat Happy Meals. Mara makes the role her own, a bundle of disjoints and razor edges, silently raging. She rocks. Yes, it is disconcerting to see big-name actors traipse around in Swedish snow so soon after seeing other actors speak their own language in their own land, but Craig is oddly effective (and nerdy) as an everyman in deep turmoil. Scripter Steven Zallian smartly condenses the long post-climax. Still, check out the original, a true gut-puncher. 2011: A-