The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Columbia Pictures | Release Date: December 20, 2011 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
71
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 41 Critic Reviews
Positive:
31
Mixed:
9
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottDec 20, 2011
If there's a complaint, it's that it flirts with rambling once the main case is solved -- nearly 20 minutes before the movie ends. But Fincher uses that remaining time to expand on Lisbeth's character, which is hard to hold against him. Read full review
100
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliDec 20, 2011
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo can stand on its own as Fincher's valentine to goth girl power, detective stories, and the grotesqueness of the human heart. Read full review
100
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleDec 19, 2011
The resulting film is neither better nor worse than the Swedish film, but it's more cinematic. Read full review
100
Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanDec 13, 2011
Fincher has made The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo into an electrifying movie by turning the audience into addicts of the forbidden, looking for the sick and twisted things we can't see. Read full review
90
The New YorkerDavid DenbyDec 5, 2011
This is a bleak but mesmerizing piece of filmmaking; it offers a glancing, chilled view of a world in which brief moments of loyalty flicker between repeated acts of betrayal. Read full review
88
St. Louis Post-DispatchCalvin WilsonDec 20, 2011
The film isn't quite as edgy as Fincher's best work - "Seven," "Fight Club" and "Zodiac" are masterpieces of modern angst. But the director brings a fresh eye to what might easily have been an unnecessary rehash of the 2009 Swedish adaptation. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertDec 20, 2011
Under the direction of David Fincher and with a screenplay by Steven Zaillian. I don't know if it's better or worse. It has a different air. Read full review
88
USA TodayClaudia PuigDec 20, 2011
Fincher's electrifying storytelling makes the most of unsettling visuals, large casts, complex plots and sharp dialogue. Read full review
88
Miami HeraldRene RodriguezDec 20, 2011
Chemistry is one of the few things left filmmakers can't fake with CGI, and the dynamic between Craig and Mara in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is so sensational, it instantly propels the movie beyond glossy, high-toned pulp into something far more affecting. Read full review
88
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaDec 19, 2011
This beautifully taut and terrifying thriller is faithful to its source in just about every way that matters. Read full review
88
Charlotte ObserverLawrence ToppmanDec 19, 2011
This film has two of Fincher's happiest trademarks: It's full of information and stretches over a remarkably long time (165 minutes), yet it's neither confusing nor overextended. Read full review
85
MovielineStephanie ZacharekDec 20, 2011
Craig has one clear advantage over Michael Nyqvist, the actor who played the same character in the Swedish Girl movies: He has erotic charisma to spare, as opposed to Nyqvist's perfunctory, doughy sexuality. Read full review
83
The A.V. ClubScott TobiasDec 20, 2011
Mara's Salander is the film's lifeblood, a shrewd yet vulnerable outsider whose resilience and pluck help Fincher elevate The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo above the standard procedural. But just barely. Read full review
80
SalonAndrew O'HehirDec 20, 2011
This is an immersive and powerful thriller, driven by terrific leading performances. It's mostly really good and then it wears out its welcome. Read full review
80
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzDec 19, 2011
The movie plays to Fincher's strengths, with its dark elements and cool feel, combining for a bracing pop-culture experience. Read full review
80
EmpireDamon WiseDec 16, 2011
A tough, post-punk Tintin-meets-Klute for the Occupy Wall Street set, this kinetic, hard-edged thriller is the perfect festive comedown for Fincher fans and dysfunctional families everywhere. Read full review
80
VarietyJustin ChangDec 13, 2011
As classy a film as could be made from Stieg Larsson's sordid page-turner, David Fincher's much-anticipated return to serial-killer territory is a fastidiously grim pulp entertainment that plays like a first-class train ride through progressively bleaker circles of hell. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleMarc SavlovDec 21, 2011
It's a knockout, sucker punch of a performance, and although it doesn't completely erase the memory of Rapace (and why should it?), Mara's doomy gaze cuts through the hype and bores straight into your soul. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeWesley MorrisDec 20, 2011
I don't think I've seen an actor do more with deadpan expressions than Mara does in this movie. Her face doesn't move but, whether she's tasing a man or standing in front of a mirror watching a cigarette dangle from her mouth, we respond to her. Read full review
75
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerDec 20, 2011
The coolness here has its creepiness, as in the dispassionate way Fincher depicts Lisbeth's rape and her subsequent, harrowing revenge, but the suspicion remains: Fincher didn't make this movie his own because he doesn't consider it his own. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam LaceyDec 19, 2011
Not too surprisingly, Fincher doesn't bring his auteur A-game here, though his crafty B-game is better than most. As well, the break-out performance of Rooney Mara as the semi-feral computer hacker, Lisbeth Salander, gives the film a residue of authentic anguish. Read full review
75
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallDec 19, 2011
In any language with anyone at the helm, Lisbeth is still a killer. Read full review
75
Portland OregonianShawn LevyDec 19, 2011
There's powerful craft here, and Larsson's story has more than proven its ability to grip. But missing almost entirely is a sense of urgency and discovery. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsDec 19, 2011
The most coldly compelling version yet of the tale dreamed up by the late Stieg Larsson. Read full review
70
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternDec 22, 2011
Has much to recommend it - high-end craftsmanship, a singular heroine, a labyrinthine mystery, an intriguing milieu - yet lacks a vital spark. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinDec 22, 2011
David Fincher's American remake of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo adds nothing to the previous adaptation, but it's certainly the more evocative piece of filmmaking. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyDec 13, 2011
Dragon Tattoo is too neatly wrapped up, too fastidious to get under your skin and stay there. Read full review
63
Rolling StonePeter TraversDec 22, 2011
From him (Fincher), we get – what? – a faithful adaptation that brings the dazzle but shortchanges on the daring. Read full review
63
Washington PostAnn HornadayDec 19, 2011
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo may want it both ways, getting its tawdry kicks while tsk-tsking those who deliver them in real life, but Mara's bristling, unbridled performance gives the film the ballast it needs to pull off that curious, undeniably engrossing, balancing act. Read full review
63
ObserverRex ReedDec 14, 2011
The great screenwriter Steven Zaillian's elaborate, convoluted script, so muddled that even after it's over you still don't know what it's all about, is a drawback - but the movie is a master class in sinister style, tense and deeply uncomfortable. Read full review
63
Slant MagazineEd GonzalezDec 13, 2011
The difference between Niels Arden Oplev's adaptation of Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and David Fincher's own is not, as some might have hoped, the difference between night and day, but between curdled milk and a warmed-over holiday second. Read full review
60
Chicago ReaderBen SachsDec 21, 2011
The task of dramatizing this proved too difficult for Niels Arden Oplev when he directed a Swedish adaptation in 2009, but as Fincher demonstrated in "Social Network," he knows how to make information technology eerily seductive. Unfortunately Larsson's salacious plot elements - mass murder, Nazism, and the like - feel just as shallow as they did in the earlier version. Read full review
60
New York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierDec 19, 2011
He (Fincher) gives in to its mimicry of an Agatha Christie parlor game. Only instead of Miss Marple, the old-gal crime-solver with piercing blue eyes, we get Lisbeth Salander, pierced goth-girl investigator with raccoon eyes. Read full review
60
Time OutKeith UhlichDec 13, 2011
Fincher's film tips much more in the indulging direction of crowd Comic-Con - delighting the franchise junkie above all other considerations. Read full review
60
Boxoffice MagazineSara Maria VizcarrondoDec 13, 2011
You'll be happier with the film if you don't expect fidelity to source material, but that doesn't mean you'll hate it if you loved Niels Arden Oplev's movie. Read full review
50
SlateDana StevensDec 20, 2011
Fincher is a master of mood and atmosphere, but this chilly, efficient movie never transcends the shallowness of its source material. Read full review
50
Village VoiceJ. HobermanDec 20, 2011
The remake is an altogether leaner, meaner, more high-powered, stylish, and deftly directed affair, though similarly hampered by a too-long narrative fuse. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranDec 20, 2011
This film's cold, almost robotic conception of Salander as a twitchy, anorexic waif feels more like a stunt than a complete character, and so the best part of the reason we care enough to endure all that mayhem has gone away. Read full review
50
TimeRichard CorlissDec 20, 2011
Seeing Fincher's version is like getting a Christmas gift of a book you already have. This edition has a nicer binding and prettier illustrations than your beloved old paperback, but it's essentially a reproduction of the same old dragon. Dragon Tat-two. Read full review
50
The New York TimesA.O. ScottDec 19, 2011
There are waves of brilliantly orchestrated anxiety and confusion but also long stretches of drab, hackneyed exposition that flatten the atmosphere. We might be watching "Cold Case" or "Criminal Minds," but with better sound design and more expressive visual techniques. Read full review
38
New York PostKyle SmithDec 20, 2011
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is, as you'd expect, rubbish, but the word is slightly too kind. The David Fincher film (like the very similar Swedish one - released in the US just last year! - and the book) is not even good rubbish. Read full review
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