Title: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Director: David Fincher Starring: Daniel Craig, Rooney Mara Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 Studio: Columbia Pictures Genre(s): Drama/Action Rated:       (For brutal violent content including rape and torture, strong sexuality, graphic nudity, and language)

CONSUMER ADVICE

Parents, there is a shocking amount of drug use, violence, rape, and sexual content. Recommended for ages 18 and up.

To understand the brilliance of a thriller like “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” is to understand how it relates to people. Based off the popular book by Steig Larson, he once witnessed a girl named Lisabeth being raped and did nothing to help her. He never got over that guilt and sat down to write “Men Hate Women,” which was translated to “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” around the world and became a best seller. Indeed, to understand “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” is to understand the irony in that this is a movie based off a book written by a male, with a screenplay written by men, directed by a man, and starring mostly male characters that seems to despise men at the core of everything.

Elisabeth Salander is a twenty-three year old computer hacker who was raised being abused by men. Her father, her various guardians and even some of the men in this very film. She is helping solve a murder mystery with Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig), who is a famous journalist who was recently successfully sued for libel. He's been hired by a rich business mogul (Christopher Plummer) to investigate the death of his granddaughter Harriet, who was murdered over forty years ago. Along the way Blomkvist finds that a murder trail of women who were raped and then killed may play a key roles in Harriet's disappearance, which is where the largely theme I brought up earlier comes into play.

See, “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” is likely to be labeled as a murder mystery or an action thriller. Both of these descriptions would be correct and both would be incorrect at the same time. Indeed, watching the movie I was struck by the fact that this was a movie that seemed to despise men. The men in this movie are usually corrupt and taking advantage of women in horrible ways. This is why a protagonist like Lisabeth is such a polarizing character. She fights back. She is in control of her life. Her sexuality is her own to define. No one needs to rescue her. The fact that she can keep up with the extremely observant Blomkvist shows that she's helping him more than he's helping her.

It's almost hard to believe a movie like this exists anymore. We've come a long way from the old days of Hollywood where women in film were heroes if they could settle down with a nice man and raise children. There is nothing wrong with this thinking and we still see some of those women today. But “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” is a unique film because it stars a woman living in a man's world, playing by man's rules, in a production that is controlled by men in all major aspects. Yet make no mistake: “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” is HER film! SHE is the one who makes this movie memorable! SHE is the one who fights back! Though it could never heal the pain, I think Larson would be pleased to see that David Fincher made the film about Lisabeth, therefor giving the character the poetic justice she's always deserved.