Forty years ago, Harriet Vanger disappeared from a family gathering on the island owned and inhabited by the powerful Vanger clan. Her body was never found, yet her uncle is convinced it was murder and that the killer is a member of his own tightly knit but dysfunctional family. He employs disgraced financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Craig) and the tattooed, ruthless computer hacker Lisbeth Salander (Mara) to investigate. When the pair link Harriet's disappearance to a number of grotesque murders from almost forty years ago, they begin to unravel a dark and appalling family history. But the Vangers are a secretive clan, and Blomkvist and Salander are about to find out just how far they are prepared to go to protect themselves.

It is difficult to review David Fincher's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo without a comparison to its Swedish screen adaptation by Niels Arden Oplev in 2010. Contrary to popular belief, Fincher's film is not a Hollywood remake of an acclaimed foreign language feature. Rather, it is an auteurial re-imagination of author Stieg Larsson's bestselling novel. The dark and disturbing material of Larsson's book is a match made in heaven for Fincher, who has directed his fair share of similarly-themed films in Seven (1995) and Zodiac (2007). In other words, you won't find a more perfect filmmaker to helm Dragon Tattoo than Fincher.

This is the plot in two sentences: Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) is a journalist who is tasked by Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer) to solve the mystery of a death in the family that happened many decades ago. Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara) is a young computer hacker who helps him with the task. Things get deadly as they race against time to put an end to the uncertainty. Now, that's just the gist of it. For those unfamiliar with the book and Oplev's film, you are in for a treat because this is one of the most layered of all screen mysteries in recent years, and it is tough not to be engaged by it.

The most striking aspect of Fincher's film that sets it apart from its screen counterpart is its handling of mood and tone. A technical masterclass, Dragon Tattoo features bleak cinematography that chills you to the bone as shots of the cold, wintery setting give a strong sense of isolation. The camera is also used brilliantly to create unsettling moments that increase in frequency as the film plays on. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross' second musical collaboration with Fincher after The Social Network (2010) is also more atmospheric, and at times, menacing, providing a unique metallic sound to the dark imagery. 

In terms of performances, Craig and Mara give adequate displays, but they are nowhere as potent as Michael Nyqvist and Noomi Rapace's world-weary interpretations of their characters in the Swedish film. There is a feeling that Craig and Mara are too comfortable with each other's character, hence the rawness of their interactions is sorely lacking. Both films however share a common trait: A lackluster and draggy ending that peters off into the end credits. I expected Fincher to give us a more urgently-paced epilogue that makes use of the screen momentum generated from the first two hours or so; after all, he managed to make a movie about Facebook engaging even till the very end.  

Despite its flaws, Dragon Tattoo is an excellent take on the theme of isolation - both geographic and character-wise. But what emerges from the hellish amalgam of masochistic and anti-Semite elements is Lisbeth's confident, assured character. An anti-heroine of sorts, Mara's Lisbeth is not just the face of a new breed of young, empowered women gracing our cinema screens (think Hailee Steinfield in True Grit (2010), or Jennifer Lawrence in the upcoming The Hunger Games (2012)), but is perhaps the most strangely attractive of the lot. Yes, it really is the Goth makeup.