David Fincher's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is better-crafted than the Swedish adaptation

David Finchers The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is better crafted than the Swedish adaptation Image There’s no doubt that the new version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which opened Tuesday, Dec. 20, is a better-crafted film than the Swedish adaptation of Steig Larsson’s book that came out just two years ago. Director David Fincher is deservedly regarded as one of the best directors working today, whereas you probably can’t even name the guy who crafted the Swedish one. Fincher’s new edition, which stars Rooney Mara as psychologically damaged hacker Lisbeth Salander, is a far slicker, sleeker affair than its counterpart, but it’s hard to imagine that what the world needs now is another The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Once again, Lisbeth and disgraced journalist Mikael Blomkvist (played here by Daniel Craig) are trying to solve a 20year-old murder, which leads them to a serial killer who’s been preying on young women across Sweden for decades. It’s a complex, convoluted story, well adapted by Steve Zaillian, but one that didn’t interest me as much as Fincher’s other serial-killer movies, Zodiac or Se7en.

Mara is great as Lisbeth, a pierced and tattooed outsider who wears her scars everywhere, inside and out, but I found myself fading out whenever she wasn’t on the screen. Although Lisbeth’s story becomes intertwined with Mikael’s, I was always far more interested in her than in the movie’s whodunit. Perhaps that’s because I’d seen the Swedish version; perhaps it’s because it seemed far more obvious in this version. Or maybe it’s because serial killers, less frequent in rural Sweden, are omnipresent in the American cultural oeuvre, easy to find during prime time on any cop and/or lawyer show, any night of the week.

Fans of the book who haven’t seen the Swedish version will likely find Fincher’s edition well-written, well-crafted and well-acted. But is it necessary? That’s a mystery that will likely remain unsolved.

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David Fincher's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is better-crafted than the Swedish adaptation