The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2011)

When I first heard that David Fincher, one of my favourite directors of the past 20 years, was due to helm a second film version of Stieg Larsson's novel The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, I was not exactly over the moon. Before too long, though, I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt, if only because there was the original source material to draw from and [ick] re-imagine, thereby (maybe, possibly, kinda) not making this a remake per se. (What d'ya mean, I'm stretching?!)

Nevertheless, I very much enjoyed the book and its two sequels. And I enjoyed the Swedish films, even though the first one was by far the best of the three, and all of them left plenty to be desired. [NB: I watched the "short" versions rather than the extended cuts.]

So, was it necessary to have a "remake" of this story? And is the new take on it significantly better than and/or different from the first?

Let's start with the opening-credits sequence. I really didn't like it. Fincher usually makes good opening credits, but this one left me cold. Yes, I could see the parallels with the story; I'm neither blind nor stupid. But I just didn't like it. It seemed out of keeping with the film and the story, frankly. I had that sinking feeling...

Thankfully, though, from there onwards, everything goes much more to (my) plan, and the plot starts to unfold almost painfully slowly, just like it does in every version of the story. But once all the expostion is out of the way, we get down to the meat in fine style. And this is where it becomes real Fincher territory, of the ilk of Se7en and Zodiac: investigation.

Some random thoughts: Early on, Fincher sticks closer to the source material than the Swedish film did. But he changes things up at the end. Both versions of the film made changes, yes, and of course that is to be expected with any adaptation of a novel.

A bit of comparisony stuff: Fincher's version is better made, too -- of that there is no question. But of course he has the action taking place in Sweden, with Swedish characters speaking English, which is jarring in its own way.

Q&A: Was it necessary to have another film version of this story? Honestly, probably not. Will I watch either version again? Yes; probably both of them.

So, how to score this puppy? Actually, I'm gonna give it 78 points, the same as I gave Zodiac on first viewing. But I think Zodiac is better overall and, having now seen it a second time, deserves to be scored a tad higher.

The Game

I'll say upfront that it's hard-ish for me to be critical of Fincher. I've liked him since Alien³, which I always thought was significantly better than Aliens. Yes, I am that ahead of my time.

So, I thought I'd give The Game another go. I remember it being fun.

Yeah, it's got Michael Douglas in it, but sometimes Mikey is great. I mean, who doesn't love him in Traffic (recently rewatched; review coming soon) or Falling Down? And Sean Penn. Come on. How can this film fail?

And it doesn't.

Conrad (Penn) buys super-wealthy brother Nicholas (Douglas) a gift certificate to partake in a "game" of some sort, but he gives no clues about what it involves. There follows a veritable plague of calamities that befall our hapless (but frankly not very likable) hero Nick.

Is this part of the game? Or has Nick been taken for a ride by a bunch of conmen? Is Conrad involved? How about waitress Christine (Deborah Kara Unger), who Nick has picked up along the way?

Full of twists and turns, this movie should keep you guessing even while it increases the heights to which you're asked to suspend your disbelief. But it's a fun couple of hours, even on a repeat viewing.

Ultimately, though, this is a film that entertains. Nothing more, nothing less. For that, I award The Game a solid 70 points.

Zodiac

I'm a big fan of David Fincher; have been since Alien3. I never understood the slamming that film got. For me it was always better than Cameron's effort. I look forward to each new Fincher movie, and it was disappointing that I didn't manage to catch this one on the big screen.

Zodiac is a film about obsession -- one man's obsession over an unclosed serial-killer case. The man in question is not a cop; nor is he a journalist per se. Rather, he is a newspaper cartoonist, and the film follows his story over a 30-odd year period. The serial killer is Zodiac, the inspiration behind the Scorpio character in the first Dirty Harry film.

There are several great things about this film: the story; the performances (Gyllenhaal, Downey, Ruffalo, et al); the direction; the look; the feel; the scope; the ambition... But it's the latter that is the film's only problem.

The nature of the story is that little spurts of activity come in the case once in a blue moon, so what we end up with is an awful lot of "three years later"-type subtitles. This leads to a sense of bittiness, which is unfortunate. That said, I'm not sure how else such a story could have been tackled while remaining faithful to the source material.

I liked the film very much; it is a slow-burning thriller based upon character rather than action. After a second viewing, I score Zodiac 80 out of 100 (revised from an original 78).