When it was first announced that David Fincher, hot off the hugely impressive awards contender THE SOCIAL NETWORK, would be directing an English language remake of Niels Arden Oplev’s international smash hit THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO I was more than a little perplexed. While Fincher’s debut was the second sequel in the hugely popular ALIEN series, he had since chosen increasingly intellectual, unique and envelope-pushing works. The idea that he would join this recent fad of remaking any half-decent foreign film that experiences a modicum of success overseas seemed like a giant step backwards. Regardless of the quality of his final film, Fincher seemed to be setting himself up for a fall. But perhaps that was the appeal of the challenge ahead.

Fincher stated very early on in the process that his film would be a new adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s novel, rather than a remake of the Swedish made-for-television film. He was also adamant that, although this was to be an English language film, it was to keep its Swedish setting and the characters would also remain so, with names intact. Lead actress Noomi Rapace was being courted for all manner of Hollywood projects, but it appears Fincher had no interest in recasting her for his films, despite her familiarity with the material, flawless English and more than adequate acting chops. Instead, the director went with relative unknown Rooney Mara, who had played Nancy in the woeful remake of A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, and had a small yet memorable role in Fincher’s last film, as Erica Albright, the girl who dumps Mark Zuckerberg in the opening scene and who he spends the rest of the movie trying to get over.

The role of Lisbeth Salander, the pierced, inked and deeply troubled computer hacker is – as the title suggests – the beating heart of THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, and Mara does an absolutely phenomenal job, every bit as good as – perhaps even slightly better than – Rapace did in the Swedish trilogy. All skin and bone, and harbouring a lifetime of grief, pain and abuse inside her frail body, Lisbeth is the embodiment of anti-establishment who tears through life on her motorbike, and survives on her ability to expose the dirty secrets of others. Lisbeth could not be further removed from Erica, and Mara’s transformation from the sharp-witted, proud yet immaculately presented undergraduate to this dishevelled, insecure wreck of a woman is perhaps the film’s crowning achievement.

After all, the biggest problem with THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO in all of its incarnations is that the plot at its centre – essentially a 40-year-old missing person case investigated by a recently shamed journalist (Daniel Craig, foregoing the Swedish accent in exchange for a handsome collection of scarves) at the behest of an ailing patriarch – isn’t nearly as interesting as Lisbeth. It is obvious very early on that there is more to the case, the aristocratic Vanger family, intrepid reporter Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth than meets the eye, but it’s nothing we haven’t seen dozens of times before in Sunday night dramas or disposable airport novels. Lest we forget that the source material is little more than popular pulp fiction from the bestsellers list that has been compulsory holiday reading for wives and girlfriends everywhere for the past decade. One can’t help but suspect that simply because the Swedish film was successful internationally, the material has been elevated by the mainstream to the status of a modern classic of world cinema, for no better reason than it is an effective thriller with subtitles. Couple this with the fact that Fincher has taken it on, and suddenly what was a throwaway paperback has suddenly become essential viewing.

What Fincher brings to the table is a smart, yet understated visual aesthetic that echoes the wintry climes of Northern Sweden beautifully. This is a story about secrets, and every character in play presents an image of themselves that is but a fraction of who they really are. In this hostile environment, everybody keeps themselves quite literally under wraps, and even the countryside itself dares spend precious few hours a day in sunlight. Fincher’s muted colour scheme, therefore, perfectly suits the mood of the film, which is as icy and impersonal as the characters on screen. They interact only through arguments, lies and accusations and even supposedly tender embraces between characters flirting with a romance, remain brutal, detached and lacking any real emotion.

There could perhaps be no greater team than Fincher and composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross to chronicle the life of a character like Lisbeth Salander. She represents every problem facing 21st Century Western civilization, squeezed into a single 100-pound frame. Be it abuse, poverty, sexual ambiguity, exploitation, invasion of privacy (be it physical, emotional or via the Internet), she represents them all, and what is left is almost too fragile to be called a real human being. She is practically incapable of interacting with other people, let alone forming a relationship, yet there is something about Mikael Blomkvist to which she is attracted. Perhaps because she investigated him, believes she knows all his secrets, that she feels she is able to trust him. Indeed, he hires her to help with his investigation, he pays her, treats her like a real person and with a modicum of respect. Perhaps because nobody has done that for a very long time – maybe never – Lisbeth is able to open up emotionally to this man who is clearly old enough to be her father.

Blomkvist has problems too. He has recently been humiliated in court – exposed for falsifying evidence in his attempts to bring down a man he believes to be corrupt. He has taken the Vanger assignment to exile himself and escape the hounding by his journalistic peers. But it also appeals to his investigative streak and his natural dislike for the upper classes. Daniel Craig, enjoying a healthy run of A-list assignments while the Bond franchise was getting back on its feet, does a fine job here playing against his recognised thuggish screen persona. Blomkvist is not a man of action and when he finds himself in threatening situations, he runs rather than fights and is clearly less capable of looking after himself than his diminutive companion. Craig is, however, well groomed, articulate and able to communicate with people in a way Lisbeth simply cannot. In fact, it is Blomkvist’s disarming talent for getting people talking that begins to scratch away at Lisbeth’s prickly, dragon-decorated shell. Everything about her is designed to scare people off – she wears a t-shirt emblazoned “Fuck off you fucking fuck” to get her point across, but Blomkvist looks straight through it all. And that’s never happened before…and she doesn’t know what it means.

Fincher’s film feels every bit its 158 minutes, and its clinical storytelling can be a struggle to engage with at times, but succeeds in being more immediate and relevant than its Swedish predecessor. The sad truth is that after seeing this there is little reason to seek out Oplev’s original, as they feel incredibly similar and Fincher’s assured hand might well give his version the slight cinematic edge. As is often the case with Fincher’s work, the film’s opening credits are a genuine highlight, and here he revisits his music video days of yesteryear, with an incredible display of oil-drenched bodies and other assorted punk/metal imagery set to Trent Reznor & Karen O’s delightfully anarchic rendition of Led Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song. Beyond these elements, the film is perfectly serviceable, without being anything better. The central investigation remains as remarkably unremarkable as it ever was, and for all its exploitative elements of murder, rape, torture, abuse, corruption and lies, what will stay with audiences most is the image of a broken, yet resilient young woman scrubbing the evils of the world off her frail and horrifically violated body.

As mentioned before, Mara’s powerhouse performance has not only assured her a healthy career for the foreseeable future (even outside this film’s two sequels, which are almost certainly happening) but all but totally extinguishes Noomi Rapace’s previous incarnation of Lisbeth Salander from memory. It is the character that will endure long after the rest of this film disappears, and fully deserves recognition as one of the great screen creations of recent years. At once a victim and a warrior, Lisbeth falls somewhere between Fincher’s previous antiheroes Mark Zuckerberg and Tyler Durden, a computer whiz kid with little or no social skills, but who parades an incredible and wholly individual sense of style that distracts from her unquenchable thirst to see the world burn.

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO is now available on Bluray/DVD