Review by Gary Tooze

Production:

Disc:

Video:

Audio:

• 6:37 Men Who Hate Women
• 15:39 Casting Salander
• 5:29 Different In Every Way
• 14:08 The Look Of Salander
• 4:06 Mara/Fincher
• 6:22 Irene Nesser
• 2:51 Salander Test Footage
• 6:40 Casting Blomkvist
• 3:28 Daniel Craig On Film Acting
• 2:53 Dressing Blomkvist
• 3:11 Stelland Skarsgard On Film Acting
• 6:08 Psychopathy
• 5:26 Bondage
• 4:07 Torture
• 4:34 Wrapped In Plastic
• 2:06 Gunplay
• 4:41 Casting Armansky
• 6:39 Goran Visnjic auditions with Fincher & Casting Director Laray Mayfield
• 5:06 Thinking Evil Shit
• 2:37 Interior - Salander's Apartment
• 16:48 Rape/Revenge
• 5:41 Interior - Blomkvist's Cottage
• 7:36 Interior - Martin's House
• 17:50 Stockholm Syndrome
• 6:21 Stockholm's Tunnelbana
• 6:00 Fuck These People
• 11:55 The End
• 6:51 Picture Wrap
• 14:26 In the Cutting Room
• 6:34 Automated Dialogue Replacement ADR
• 7:58 Visual Effects
• 2:30 Main Title Sequence - 3 Way Comparison (Layout/Animation/Final) (with or without commentary)
• 3:57 Metal One Sheet
• 1:22 Mondo Mondino
• 8:55 Hard Copy commercial (with or without commentary)
• 0:30 each 7 TV Spots

DVD-R of the film

Bitrate:

 

Description: Disgraced journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) accepts an invitation to surreptitiously investigate a forty year old unsolved murder on behalf of the victim's uncle, Swedish industrialist Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer). Meanwhile, tattooed hacker Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara), hired to investigate Blomkvist, discovers the truth behind the conspiracy that led to his fall from grace. Thrown together by fate, the unlikely duo uncovers a secret history of murder and sexual abuse festering beneath the veneer of Sweden's industrial past, all the while drawing closer to a quiet evil waiting to engulf them both.

***

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is the first film in Columbia Pictures' three-picture adaptation of Stieg Larsson's... literary blockbuster The Millennium Trilogy. Directed by David Fincher and starring Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara, the film is based on the first novel in the trilogy, which altogether have sold 50 million copies in 46 countries and become a worldwide.

 

 

The Film:

Tiny as a sparrow, fierce as an eagle, Lisbeth Salander is one of the great Scandinavian avengers of our time, an angry bird catapulting into the fortresses of power and wiping smiles off the faces of smug, predatory pigs. The animating force in Stieg Larsson’s “Millennium” trilogy — incarnated on screen first by Noomi Rapace and now, in David Fincher’s adaptation of “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” by Rooney Mara — Lisbeth is an outlaw feminist fantasy-heroine, and also an avatar of digital antiauthoritarianism.

Excerpt from A.O.Scott at the NY Times located HERE

The dark seeps out of the screen like living thing, evidence that The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is more than a paycheck to director David Fincher, who has improbably affixed his own imprint on a movie that comes weighted down with possibilities and expectations no filmmaker should have to contend with. Aided by a tightly-wrapped screenplay adapted from Stieg Larsson's global best-seller by Steven Zaillian, Fincher strips the material to its skeleton, then adds back the sinew and tissue to create something that is unmistakably The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but in no way a carbon copy of the earlier Swedish movie or the book itself. This is what a movie adaptation should be: a film whose base narrative has its roots in the source material but whose soul can be identified through the images that unfold on screen.

Excerpt from James Berardinelli at ReelViews located HERE

Image :    NOTE: The below Blu-ray captures were taken directly from the Blu-ray disc.

Shot digitally with the Red Epic, and Red One MX cameras, David Fincher's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is, predictably, very dark. The Sony Blu-ray looks magnificent due to the entire film being put to one dual-layered BD disc - almost filling it at over 49 Gig. The only supplement sharing the feature disc is the Fincher commentary. So the 2.5 hour film has a very high bitrate and none of the weaknesses (flaring) of production format are prevalent. On the contrary the detail - especially in close-ups - is extremely impressive. Some of the interior shots have a golden-yellow hue - but I expect this is intentional.  The contrast exhibits healthy, piercingly pitch, black levels that create a noir-supportive aura for the viewing experience. This Blu-ray has a no video weaknesses that I could detect - it is flawless. The image quality is a triumph for a film that utilizes the powerfully dark visuals as one of its most formidable attributes.

CLICK EACH BLU-RAY CAPTURE TO SEE ALL IMAGES IN FULL 1920X1080 RESOLUTION

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The audio - a DTS-HD Master 5.1 track at 2344 kbps is powerful in the intended areas. In a couple of occasions it did tend to blow away the dialogue portion - which seemed to require a volume hike - but other than that this track is solid. Great effects crisply reach the rear speakers from squealing motorcycles to Enya to Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross intense original track. It's all good and fills the Home theater space with aggression, depth and subtle effects. There are optional subtitles and my Momitsu has identified it as being a region 'A'-locked.

Extras :

 

Blu-ray 2

 

BOTTOM LINE:
This wasn't much of a retelling as a different stylistic approach to the film. It works very well and although the original (reviewed HERE) was fabulous - this is, predictably, more polished. Fincher was not about to be bested. The Blu-ray is a very sexy package and won't disappoint those who have already viewed the Noomi Rapace trilogy. I feel like watching it again - a few hours after my first viewing. This is great Home Theater fodder. Strongly recommended! 

Gary Tooze

March 6th, 2012