With book sales topping the 50 million mark, there was never any doubt that there would be an American movie adaptation of Stieg Larsson's best-selling trilogy. Those kind of numbers are too hard for Hollywood to resist.
With David Fincher at the helm, Bond star Daniel Craig in the lead role and Nine Inch Nail's Trent Reznor scoring the soundtrack, you'd think the US version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo would be in good hands.
Mostly, it is. The intertwining stories about journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Craig) investigating an ageing small town murder, and off-the-radar anarchist-slash-hacking genius Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara in a reprisal of the role that made Noomi Rapace famous) and her guardianship woes, are enticing, gripping and tense.
Reznor's unmissable soundtrackeffort is almost worth the purchase price alone.
But the constant need for excessive montages, large chunks of plot explanation and unnecessary set-ups gets wearisome and gives away the fact that Larsson's books contain much more detail. And the occasional outburst of brutal sexual violence is shocking.
