A yakuza-palooza of a movie

A Japanese mob movie that doesn't skimp on violence.

With his new movie, Outrage, Takeshi Kitano not only has put his toe back in yakuza waters, he has taken a full-body plunge. (Kitano's last yakuza film was 2000's Brother.) The opening of the movie involves a slow pan of limos. Drivers and assorted flunkies wait for their bosses to leave a big mob meeting. It's a master stroke from Kitano, who also appears in the movie and who may most familiar to American audiences for The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi. It's an off-beat but telling way to introduce us to this strange and increasingly violent world. Like feudal lords the bosses are surrounded by retainers who cool their heels away from the main action. It takes time to sort through the confusing gaggle of feuding mob bosses -- both petty and important. What's not confusing is Kitano's use of graphic violence, including a scene involving a mobster and a dentist's drill that forced me to avert my eyes. As an actor, Kitano is known as Beat Takeshi. Here, he plays Otomo, a mob guy who takes on the kind of assignments others won't do and executes them without much fuss or complaint. Otomo is ordered to work against one boss, but eventually learns that in a world of rampant betrayal, trust can prove fatal. The ending is more downbeat than you might expect, and not everyone will be able to tolerate the movie's excruciatingly depicted violence. But Kitano's fans won't want to miss the director's re-entry into the world of the yakuza, where giving someone the finger means something entirely different than it does in most American contexts. Outrage is a yakuza movie that sometimes smirks in the same way as Otomo, who seems to know he's stuck in a world populated by the most ruthless of vipers.*

*Connecting the dots: In the current issue of The New Yorker (Jan. 9, 2012), Peter Hessler profiles Jake Adelstein, an American who has been writing about the yakuza for years. At one point, Hessler quotes an ex-yakuza as telling him that a yakuza must think of himself as being on stage. "If you're bad at playing the role of a yakuza, then you're a bad yakuza." I couldn't resist applying this quote to Outrage, in which some of the yakuza performances erupt in exaggerated fury. That, of course, raises an interesting question about Japanese gangsters and other major role players. At what point does the act become real? Being a yakuza may require acting skills, but when the performance turns violent, does it become something else? When Hamlet ends, the stage is littered with corpses, but after the curtain falls, the actors get up and go about their business. The same can't be said for the most unfortunate of yakuza victims. Oh well, I can feel myself starting to go in circles here, but I wanted to add this note as an aid to understanding and perhaps appreciating some of the performance styles in Outrage.

Broadcast critics set for year-end honors

Hugo and The Artist lead the field of Broadcast Film Critics nominees.

Just when you thought it was safe to put your formal wear back in mothballs, it's once again time to dig out the old tuxedo. OK, maybe that's not true for you (or me), but it certainly applies to lots of Hollywood folks who are about to hop a ride on the annual awards express.

The Broadcast Film Critics Association begins the season with its 17th annual awards show, which will be broadcast on VH1 live from the Hollywood Palladium on Jan 12 at 6 p.m. (MST). Comics Paul Scheer and Rob Huebel will host the event.

If you like star-gazing, it's worth knowing that the nominees all tend to show up for BFCA event, which this year features a musical and film tribute to Martin Scorsese, who also happens to have directed one of the year's most nominated movies. Scorsese's Hugo garnered 11 nominations, as did The Artist. Both films were one nomination shy of the record 12 nominations garnered by Black Swan a year ago.

The BFCA (the largest critics' organization in the U.S. and Canada) has some 250 members who ply their trade on television, radio or on line. That includes me. Maybe I'm biased, but I think the BFCA awards are a better bellwether for Oscar than the much-hyped Golden Globes.

To whet your appetite, here's a list of the major BFCA nominees:

BEST PICTURE
The Artist
The Descendants
Drive
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
The Help
Hugo
Midnight in Paris
Moneyball
The Tree of Life
War Horse


BEST ACTOR
George Clooney – The Descendants
Leonardo DiCaprio – J. Edgar
Jean Dujardin – The Artist
Michael Fassbender – Shame
Ryan Gosling – Drive
Brad Pitt – Moneyball

BEST ACTRESS
Viola Davis – The Help
Elizabeth Olsen – Martha Marcy May Marlene
Meryl Streep – The Iron Lady
Tilda Swinton – We Need to Talk About Kevin
Charlize Theron – Young Adult
Michelle Williams – My Week With Marilyn

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Kenneth Branagh – My Week With Marilyn
Albert Brooks – Drive
Nick Nolte – Warrior
Patton Oswalt – Young Adult
Christopher Plummer – Beginners
Andy Serkis – Rise of the Planet of the Apes

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Bérénice Bejo – The Artist
Jessica Chastain – The Help
Melissa McCarthy – Bridesmaids
Carey Mulligan – Shame
Octavia Spencer – The Help
Shailene Woodley – The Descendants

BEST DIRECTOR
Stephen Daldry – Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
Michel Hazanavicius – The Artist
Alexander Payne – The Descendants
Nicolas Winding Refn – Drive
Martin Scorsese – Hugo

A surprisingly safe "Dangerous" movie

It features lots of interesting period-piece trappings, but David Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method is an unsatisfying piece of work.

In David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method – an adaptation of a Christopher Hampton play called The Talking Cure – Michael Fassbender plays Carl Jung, Viggo Mortensen portrays Sigmund Freud and Keira Knightley takes on the role of Sabina Spielrein.

Jung and Freud presumably need no introduction; Spielrein on the other hand, may not be familiar to most audiences. She was a patient of Jung’s who went on to become an analyst of some repute and who also was one of Jung’s mistresses – at least according to Cronenberg’s talky period piece.

Try as I might, I seldom got past the sense that all three actors were playing characters rather than deeply inhabiting them, an impression that’s reinforced by the fact that Jung, Freud and Spielrein eventually become advocates for different – if overlapping – views of human behavior.

The screenplay, which was written by Hampton and based on a book by John Kerr, revolves around an interesting conflict, although the movie tends to make its clash of ideas seem less than urgent. I’ll risk a bit of reductionism to put it this way: Freud insisted that sex was at the core of human behavior. Jung believed there was more to humanity than sex; he affirmed what he saw as humanity’s inherently religious impulses.

A Dangerous Method might be the least Cronenberg-like of recent Cronenberg movies, a stylistically straightforward piece that sprinkles conversations (some vaguely interesting) over a variety of Swiss and Austrian locations, many shot by cinematographer Peter Suschitzky with tasteful rigor.

The movie’s sense of caution comes as a bit of a surprise because sex (and its importance) lies at the heart of the drama, as well as at the core of a growing conflict between Jung and Freud, who – for a time – thought Jung would inherit his mantle as head of the psychoanalytic movement.

Cronenberg fans needn't totally dismay; the movie is not without a bit of kinky behavior. As it turns out, Knightley’s Spielrein achieves her greatest sexual kicks by being spanked, a pleasure Jung obligingly provides, although he seems determined to show that he’s not having a good time doing it.

Jung seems to be torn between a conformist commitment to his marriage (perhaps made easier by the fact that his wife was wealthy) and the unleashing of his more libidinous drives.

Although I had difficulty totally buying either Fassbender or Mortensen, neither has the annoying impact of Knightley, who enters the picture screaming as she’s being carried into Jung’s hospital in Zurich. In portraying Spielrein’s hysteria, Knightley juts out her jaw and contorts her facial muscles as if her body is being jolted by high-voltage shocks.

I don’t know if this is a “realistic’’ portrayal of severe hysteria, but I do know that in movie acting suggestion sometimes can be more powerful than demonstrative assertion. Put another way, Knightley’s performance may drive you a little crazy.

The story is not without political overlay: An increasingly concerned Freud fears that Jung’s interest in such matters as mysticism will undermine the scientific aura that's essential to the acceptance and growth of psychoanalysis.

These arguments too often make it seem as if the movie exists to articulate various points of view rather than to deeply probe the nature of its characters. At one point, though, Vincent Cassel shows up as Otto Gross, a brilliant psychoanalyst who believes all repression represents an unhealthy limitation of freedom. Cassel's welcome presence pushes the movie away from the neatly intellectualized debate between Freud and Jung.

Of the movie’s trio of principals, Mortensen probably provides the most interesting interpretation. His Freud has a deep and cagey sense of self-assurance – at least as it applies to the psychoanalytic domain over which he presides. A Dangerous Method, however, really has more to do with Jung than with Freud, who is absent from long stretches of the movie.

Maybe that’s why Mortensen’s performance wasn‘t enough to make me buy into A Dangerous Method, a movie that seems to unfold on a distant planet where talk about sex and dreams tends to become absurdly dispassionate. In the introduction to his book, Kerr talks about the ways in which Freud and Jung became the first thinkers to live with “that peculiarly intense burden of self-reflection that distinguishes the psychology of modern man.”

Maybe, but intense self-reflection isn’t necessarily the best place to begin a drama, and neither Cronenberg nor Hampton has been able entirely to liberate the material from the confines of the stage – other than by ensuring that the film’s conversations take place against a variety of elegant European backdrops.

In a time when the talking cure seems to have been supplanted by the dispensation of pills, the issues in A Dangerous Method don’t readily spring to life. They seem to swirl inside the embryonic and insular world of psychoanalysis, which – at least in this outing – provides no satisfying dramatic conclusion.

'War Horse:' sentiment at full gallop

Steven Spielberg gives great spectacle in War Horse, but the sentimental notes may be sounded too loudly.

First, it was a book by Michael Morpurgo. Then it was a play by Nick Stafford, a theatrical showpiece that featured giant horse puppets. Now, it’s a movie by Steven Spielberg.

We’re talking about War Horse, a movie that makes maximum use of Spielberg’s talent for spectacle, as well as his penchant for pouring on the sentiment. I prefer the spectacle to the sentiment, but the mixture probably will result in one of the season’s most crowd-pleasing entertainments, a story held together by (as the title suggests) a horse.

How can you not feel sympathy for a horse that finds itself in the middle of some of the most horrific battles of World War I, at one point tangling himself in barbed wire on a scarred battlefield? It's one of the most agonizing sights you'll see this season, and Spielberg plays it for all it's worth.

Spielberg, of course, includes humans in his movie, as well, though none evokes as much emotion as the horse.

The story begins when Ted (Peter Mullan) outbids his landlord (David Thewlis) for a horse. Ted’s son (Jeremy Irvine) takes over care of the horse, which is more suited for running free than for the drudgery of farm work.

But Irvine’s Albert, who names the horse Joey, harnesses the horse’s energy and even proves that Joey can plow a rugged English field, an act of equine will that saves the family farm.

When war breaks out, Ted decides to sell Joey to the Army, and the movie becomes Spielberg’s foray into World War I. For his part, Albert pledges he will find Joey and return him to English pastures.

Once he becomes part of the military, Joey falls under the care of a strong but sensitive officer (Tom Hiddleston) – and the movie quickly breaks into episodic chunks, including a picture-slowing interlude in which Joey winds up in the care of a French grandfather (Niels Arestrup) and his granddaughter (Celine Buckens).

Of course, Albert eventually matures enough to join the British Army, which gives Spielberg a chance to show the kind of trench warfare that dominated that conflict. Spielberg and cinematographer Janusz Kaminski contrast the grim horror of war with the bucolic opening scenes, and there's no denying that some of the footage (horses pulling a huge cannon, for example) is both astonishing and sad.

And to make sure that we understand the humanity of both sides of the conflict, there's a scene that emphasizes the fact that the British soldiers and their German counterparts aren’t as different as they might believe themselves to be, the movie's can't-we-all-get-along moment. (Joey, it should be noted, falls into German hands at on point, and is pressed into service for the German army.)

Did I feel my heart strings being tugged at? Yes, but War Horse can seem so eager to connect with mainstream audiences that it loses some of its luster. There’s no denying Spielberg’s skill, but War Horse tries (too hard, I'd say) for the kind of epic grandeur that John Ford achieved when filming the American west.

War Horse boasts a dazzling display of craft; it's a horse-drawn tearjerker, the kind of old-fashioned movie that offers loads of big-screen reassurance no matter how harsh its content becomes. So I'm a little mixed on War Horse, which can be breathtakingly beautiful and ... well ... distressingly Spielbergian.

They bought a zoo, but not much of a movie

Matt Damon plays a man who buys a zoo in a family-oriented film that's never especially believable.

>We Bought A Zoo is an Americanized adaptation of a memoir by British author Benjamin Mee. I’ve skimmed Mee's book, and it seems significantly smarter than this Cameron Crowe-directed movie, an entertainment made palatable by Matt Damon’s likability as the man who buys the zoo and Scarlett Johansson’s down-to-earth turn as the zookeeper who helps him run it. You also may find that some charm accrues to the movie as a result of its story, the tale of a recent widower (Damon) who climbs out of his grief by buying a rundown zoo and learning something about the zoo business. Damon’s Benjamin not only discovers the world of animals, but breaks through to his angry teen-age son (Colin Ford). In case all that's not enough, we get shots of Benjamin's cute-as-a-button daughter (Maggie Elizabeth Jones). The supporting cast includes Thomas Hayden Church (as Ben’s older, more skeptical brother), and Elle Fanning (as a teen-ager who falls for Ford’s character). Crowe, whose last movie – Elizabethtown – tanked in a big-way flirts with after-school-movie blandness in a movie that never feels believable enough. Granted, there's something undeniably intriguing and even a little cracked about a story that puts some old-fashioned resolve into the task of trying to save a foundering zoo. Know this, though: We Bought A Zoo is long way from Crowe's best work in movies such as Say Anything, Jerry Maguire and Almost Famous.

'Tinker, Tailor' has mood to spare

It may not always be crystal clear, but Tinker, Tailor has plenty to recommend it.

I admit it. I sometimes became confused watching Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, a big-screen adaptation of John Le Carre’s 1974 novel. Frustrating? Yes, but there also were times when I found the movie so atmospherically right I didn’t care whether I could dot every “i” or cross every “t” in Le Carre’s labyrinthine plot.

A bit of background. Dense with character and incident, Le Carre’s novel does not naturally lend itself to adaptation. In 1979, it took the BBC seven episodes to translate Le Carre’s novel into a comprehensible drama. The great Alec Guinness starred as George Smiley, the world’s least emotive spy.

Those familiar either with the novel or the BBC series immediately will know that screenwriters Bridget O’Connor and Peter Straughan faced a monumental task. Fair to say, they haven’t entirely succeeded in taming Le Carre’s novel.

But in the case of Tinker, Tailor, mood and background may be as important as a plot that, in its overall arc, is easy enough to follow.

Here’s the gist: We’re nearing the end of the Cold War. The British intelligence agency – known to its employees as The Circus – is in the midst of a power shift. A group of rebellious spies is trying to unseat the agency head, known as Control (John Hurt). They succeed in ousting Control, and his most reliable operative, George Smiley (Gary Oldman). Control subsequently dies.

All of this turmoil begins when Control initiates a search for a mole who has penetrated the highest levels of British intelligence.

In keeping with the feeling of institutional decline, Tomas Alfredson -- who directed the terrific Swedish vampire movie Let the Right One In – gives the proceedings a bracingly severe tone. From the start, it’s clear that Alfredson has total command of the movie’s look.

Following the story isn’t made easier by the fact that the screenplay employs a flashback structure that can be disorienting. And the screenplay’s refusal to explain any of its spy jargon doesn’t help either.

But I doubt whether you’ll find a better supporting cast in any movie this year. Populating the spy ranks are intelligence bureaucrats played by Colin Firth, Ciaran Hinds, Toby Jones and David Hencik, all of whom are superb.

And in Hurt, Alfredson has found an actor whose weathered face does as much to suggest institutional collapse as any plot developments could. Hurt crops up at the beginning and in some flashback scenes, and he gives the movie a cynical weight that's indispensable.

Then there’s Oldman, whose restrained performance as Smiley has been praised in the British press and elsewhere. To play Smiley, Oldman slows his delivery and explores the lower octaves in his vocal range.

He can be brilliant. A scene in which a drunken Smiley reenacts a long-ago interrogation of a top and much-feared Soviet agent delivers the goods, and is punctuated by Oldman’s slight wobble when Smiley finishes his story and attempts to stand up.

But there are also times when Oldman’s restraint seems to lack resonance. Smiley has been through a lot. His wife Ann (never seen in full view) has left him. He has endured the endless sordid battles of Cold War spying. He’s been pushed aside by the agency that has dominated his life. He's hardly the kind to vent: Still, I found myself wishing that Oldman had taken us a little past Smiley’s purposefully blank expressions.

Maybe Oldman, who functions as the story’s principal investigator, didn’t want to take anything away from his fellow actors. In a scene in which George meets with Connie Sachs (Kathy Burke), a former intelligence emplyee, Oldman watches while Burke creates a telling portrait of a woman whose romantic impulses were channeled into admiration for her co-workers. It's a great small piece of work.

Although it falls short of perfection, and although, as I’ve said, Tinker, Tailor can be confusing, it always feels intelligent, partly because of Alfredson’s skillful direction and partly because there’s not an actor on screen who doesn't seem smart in some way.

Tinker, Tailor includes sexual betrayals, references to torture and fierce intra-agency battling, but instead of going for cheap thrills, the movie immerses us in a world-weariness that fits its historical moment. Alfredson may not fret about whether viewers sink or swim with the plot: But surely he wants us to swim in the same murky waters in which the characters bob, looking for something to grab hold of.

'The Artist' is one of the year's bset

It may be silent, but The Artist earns some very laud applause.

Sometimes at a film festival or in the company of a particularly interesting filmmaker, I have been fortunate enough to experience something akin to what I imagine audiences felt during the silent era, a sense of child-like wonder at the special felicities associated with the moving imagine – from a quickening of the pulse to the breaking of a heart.

Naturally, I loved Martin Scorsese’s Hugo, a movie that understands and celebrates such early pleasures. I'm equally grateful that in a year when the final Harry Potter movie boomed its way toward supersonic levels of fantasy, director Michel Hazanavicius brings back simpler joys in The Artist, a black-and-white silent movie.

Although The Artist tells a familiar story – a silent star (Jean Dujardin) hits the skids when talkies arrive – the movie nonetheless feels fresh, buoyed by a love for the movies, and perhaps even more importantly by a fascination with the gleam that movies (and everything about them) seem to give off, radiant light of unparalled intensity. The Artist also features a great dog, the importance of which shouldn't be underestimated.

Set in Hollywood, The Artist begins with Dujardin’s George Valentin at the peak of his career in the silents. Not surprisingly, Valentin relishes his celebrity, wearing it as flamboyantly and easily as a cape flung around his ample shoulders.

Dujardin, of course, has the right look for this kind of role: He’s handsome with a high-wattage smile. Valentin lives with the wife (Penelope Ann Miller) and loyal pooch in one of those lavish Hollywood mansions, something straight out of Sunset Boulevard, only less creepy. An obscenely large painting of a beaming George in top hat and tails hangs next to the front door, George's tribute to himself.

The story contrives to mix Valentin's fate with that of a young dancer (Berenice Bejo). Valentin gives the star-struck dancer her first break. She goes on to have a career that not only survives the transition to sound but flourishes. She’s Peppy Miller, a star with a name that sounds as if had been borrowed from a soft drink.

Not to be outdone, Valentin decides that he must carry on with what he regards as a purer form of movie artistry. He wants to make one more silent movie to prove that the studio types – represented here by John Goodman – are wrong. But Valentin succeeds only in showing how right Hollywood is to embrace sound. The public wants the next new thing, and Valentin's picture flops.

Hazanavicius makes a brief, startling and witty use of the sound in one of Valentin’s dreams, perhaps the movie’s most clever moment, but he's not resorting to silence as a gimmick; the absence of the human voice enhances the story.

The Artist balances Valentin’s melodramatic decline with an upbeat ending that’s designed to send audiences home smiling. Hazanavicius accomplishes this without late-picture expressions of profundity or phony uplift, but with one of the great and least fettered forms of human delight: tap dancing. Need I say more?

'Tintin' made my head spin

Parts of The Adventures of Tintin are as creative as you'd expect from Steven Spielberg, but the movie left me feeling a bit woozy.

With just about everyone climbing on the 3-D bandwagon, it’s hardly surprising that Steven Spielberg – an acknowledged master of popular entertainment – has tried his hand at it.

In the animated The Adventures of Tintin -- from a comic-book series by the Belgian artist who went by the name of Herge -- Spielberg shows off a mixture of motion-capture animation and moving camera work that makes for a dizzying ride. The story is an amalgam of three Tintin stories, consistent, I suppose, with this milkshake of a movie.

The dazzling opening sequences are set in a flea market where the intrepid Tintin (voice by Jamie Bell) purchases a model ship called The Unicorn. Of course, this is no ordinary model, but a vessel that holds a key to the mystery at the movie's heart. That means the bad guy -- one Ivan Ivanovitch Sakharine (Daniel Craig) -- wants to get his hands of the ship. Sakharine tries politeness before resorting to stronger measures.

The story eventually unites Tintin and Captain Haddock (Andy Serkis), an unashamed drunkard, whose rundown ship has been hijacked by Sakharine.

The story sends this unlikely duo in search of lost treasure, and allows Spielberg to put his hero through a variety of action-oriented trials that are bound to remind audiences that Spielberg also directed the Indiana Jones movies.

The action is skillfully mounted, of course, but there’s too much of it, and it culminates in a clash of dueling cranes that's louder than it is exciting. Moreover, the combination of motion-capture (animation just short of photo-realism) and frenzied activity creates the unwelcome sensation of an amusement park ride run amok – at least it did for me.

I wouldn’t say that Tintin is fall-down funny, but there are welcome splashes of humor, the best involving a couple of bumbling police officers voiced by Nick Frost and Simon Pegg.

It’s hardly surprising that Spielberg, who long ago earned his action stripes, knows how to keep a movie moving. And those who grew up with the Tintin series may find the movie satisfying. Personally, I found the opening credits -- which boast an appealing hand-drawn look -- more winsome and winning than almost anything that followed.

For me, Tintin’s adventures felt about as convincing as the look of Tintin’s trusty dog Snowy – which is to say that these adventures felt carefully calibrated to maximize motion capture and 3-D as much as to create any feeling of spontaneously generated pleasure.

I don't know how Tintin might play without the 3-D, but it proved too much for my eyes, which longed for the respite of some quiet exposition, say Tintin tap-tapping on his trusty typewriter.

A chilly 'Girl With The Dragon Tattoo'

Director David Fincher's Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is good, but may not ink an indelible mark.

It’s fair to say that The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo qualifies as one of the most eagerly anticipated movies of the holiday season. Given the groundwork that already has been laid, how could it not?

The late Stieg Larsson’s trilogy of novels -- of which Dragon Tattoo is the first – still sells off the charts. We’ve already seen big-screen Swedish versions of all three books, and there hardly seems to be a person attuned to popular culture who hasn’t heard of Lisbeth Salander, the tech wizard and ace hacker who harbors deep secrets and who remains Larsson’s most memorable character.

The new and beautifully crafted version – from director David Fincher (The Social Network, Zodiac and Se7ven) -- has been made with consummate care, and – most importantly -- Fincher has found an actress in Rooney Mara who matches the brilliantly edgy work done by Noomi Rapace in the Swedish original -- and that's saying a lot.

Salander’s appearance – spiky hair, multiple piercings and a pallor that might make a vampire jealous -- feels both familiar and strange. She’s like a human porcupine with quills fully extended. Touch, and you'll probably get hurt.

(An FYI: Mara appeared briefly in the opening of Fincher’s The Social Network, playing the young woman Mark Zuckerberg insulted in the movie’s first scene.)

Like Rapace, Mara also shows occasional flashes of beauty, traces of softness beneath the hardcore exterior. She’s one hell of a character, and you definitely wouldn’t want to cross her.

So what else do we get?

We get the kind of richer, more varied look that stems from having a large Hollywood budget. We also get scenes that are shocking and ghastly.

We also get the same kind of labyrinthine (a nice way of saying overly complex) plot that marked the first movie, a story full of former Nazis, wealthy aristocrats, and skeptical journalists -- not to mention serial killing, rape and revenge. And even more than his Swedish predecessor, Fincher falls prey to the furrowed-brow seriousness the material seems to evoke, pulp striving for art.

This march toward artistic legitimacy is abetted by a fine cast.

Daniel Craig brings the expected gravity and a touch of vulnerability to the role of journalist Mikael Blomkvist; Robin Wright portrays Blomkvist’s journalistic partner and sometime lover; Stellan Skarsgard appears as a member of the wealthy and highly dysfunctional Vanger family, and Christopher Plummer plays Henrik Vanger, the ranking member of the Vanger clan.

Plummer’s character summons Blomkvist to the Vanger island retreat, and hires him to investigate the long ago murder of a favorite niece, Thus, the story begins.

Two strands lace throughout the opening chapters of the story: Salander’s and Blomkvist’s, and these eventually are joined in Steven Zaillian’s script, which one imagines to have reached phone-book-like proportions to accommodate the story's two-hour and 38-minute length, not all if it fleet.

Now if you’ve read the book and seen the Swedish movie, you may inevitably find yourself playing a game of compare and contrast: It’s not easy to watch Fincher’s movie without trying to remember how the same situations were handled in both the book and the earlier film. This either becomes a distraction or a source of enjoyment, depending on your temperament.

The bottom line: I thought the Swedish movie was fine (with an exceptional turn from Rapace), but I liked Fincher’s English-language version a little better, maybe because I found myself caught up in the mood and atmosphere created by Fincher and cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth. I wouldn't call The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo Fincher's best work, but he definitely knows how to serve up a chilled and even classy dish of deviance and menace.