Maybe for the first time all year, you’ve got enough free time to get out and see a movie. Over the break, we’ll provide occasional “quick takes” on movies we’ve seen, briefly covering what we liked, what we didn’t like, and whether it’s worth your time and money. Today: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
From the first page, I thought Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was a mediocrely written example of pop fiction. But I read the entire book. And then I read the rest of the trilogy.
What made the first book so appealing to me were two things: Lisbeth Salander, the pierced, tattooed heroine and an expert hacker with a rough life; and the plot’s conflict, which involves Lisbeth and an investigative journalist, Mikael Blomvist, solving the 30-year-old murder of Harriet Vanger. David Fincher uses these two elements and creates a gem of a movie. He not only sticks to the book, but does it in a way that is darkly funny, thrilling, and psychologically unsettling all at once.
