The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo

David Fincher doesn’t make thrillers.

Thrillers are cheap, rote exercises in formula. One-note protagonists search for mysterious bad guys and, ninety minutes later, after a trail of clues leads them right to the edge of disaster but never over it, they find them. We weren’t always certain, but eventually, luckily, good triumphed over evil. It always does.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo can’t be truncated so easily. To reduce it to its skeleton would rid the story of exactly that which separates it from others of its kind: the characters. For ultimately the film, based on Stieg Larsson’s novel of the same name, is an exploration of people who happen to be caught in a terrible mystery; the mystery itself, while compelling in its own right, is not nearly as satisfying as watching the characters develop before you.

Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig), a prominent Swedish journalist, has been charged with libel and sued into oblivion by one of his subjects. His reputation demolished, along with his life savings, he accepts an assignment from an aging industrialist, Henrik Vangner (Christopher Plummer), to investigate the murder of his niece forty years ago. Add to that the Vangner family’s history of incest and Nazism, along with the suspicion that the girl’s disappearance was an inside job, and Mikael quickly finds himself wrapped up in nightmarish debacle. To aid in his pursuit he enlists the help of Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara)—who bears the title’s eponymous emblem, among a host of other aggressively strange piercings and body art—a fierce, waifish computer hacker with a photographic memory and a past as dark and tattered as her hairstyle. Together, Lisbeth and Mikael attempt to unearth the truth behind the disappearance, and whatever gruesome secrets the Vangners may possess.

Anyone familiar with Fincher’s past work (especially Se7en and Zodiac) will recognize certain trademarks, above all the bleak, ominous atmospherics and the occasionally glacial pace. More on the latter: I do not say it derisively but rather use it to draw contrast with conventional notions of the “thriller” genre. Dragon Tattoo clocks in at close to three hours, hardly a taut running length. Yet not a minute of the runtime seems excessive or extraneous. Instead, the generous length gives the plot room to breathe. It is nearly an hour before the action even begins to pick up; by that time, we have grown to know and care deeply about Mikael and Lisbeth. This in turn makes their eventual plight all the more intense.

And intense it is. Fincher demonstrates yet again a surgical mastery of suspenseful filmmaking. Though dialogue and investigation dominate the film’s action, he peppers the story with enough explosive violence to keep viewers on their toes (the book’s notorious rape scenes rival any of the atrocities depicted in Se7en). And I would be remiss if I did not genuflect before our starlet, Rooney Mara. She brings equal parts ferocity and vulnerability to the part in a way that is truly unforgettable; every moment she’s on screen is electrifying.

So no, this is not a thriller. It is thrilling, yes, but its dedication to craft strength of its characters resist the confines of the hackneyed genre. This is about as close to a work of art as a $100 million blockbuster has ever come.