by Evan Schwartz ’13

In a movie almost three hours long, laced with strong nudity, violent molestation, and disgusting sadism, it would be surprising, yet truthful, to say that the audience left the show feeling enlightened and inspired. Director David Fincher does just so in the powerful film adaptation of the late Stieg Larsson’s novel “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.”

Reporter Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig), after suffering public humiliation for being charged with libel, is hired to spend a year up North investigating the murder of Henrik Vanger’s (Christopher Plummer) young niece, Harriet, who disappeared almost 40 years ago.

Blomkvist’s investigation leads him to uncover a vicious and enigmatic crime spree of brutally murdered women, that has been haunting northern Sweden since before young Harriet’s disappearance. With the assistance of the delinquent computer hacker, Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara), Blomkvist learns that Harriet was also investigating the murders at the time of her disappearance. With greatly unorthodox strategies, the unlikely duo follows a trail of overseen evidence in order to uncover Harriet’s fate and the fate of the other women murdered.

Along the way, Fincher includes graphic scenes of sexual intercourse between multiple characters, including the gut-wrenching rapes (yes, that was plural) in which Salander is forced to endure. Although certain scenes are not for the faint of heart, audience members will throw their squirms away once the strong heroine, Salander, climbs her way up from rock bottom to save the day.

Rooney Mara, who received the part of Salander over A-listers, including Oscar-winning Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson, underwent an extreme transformation to fulfill the roles stealing the show with her drastic transformation. Learning martial arts, computer hacking, motorcycle riding, and even piercing her own body and cutting and dying her luscious gold locks, all paid off for the young star whose vengeful gait makes the audience fall strangely in love with her, cheering her on with every stymie she must overcome.

Mara may be one of the rookie actors of the film, but nobody would suspect her to be a novice acting along prestigious names such as Daniel Craig, Christopher Plummer, Stellan Skarsgard, and Robin Wright. Fincher, who directed hits such as “Fight Club”, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”, and “The Social Network” (which also starred Mara), successfully plays off of all of the cast’s strong personalities and advanced acting ability to create a dark, yet beautiful masterpiece.

Alas, when you look past the brutality that played across the screen for 158 minutes of showtime, the message of the story is clearly evident, as Larsson had wanted it to be; women continue to be abused in today’s society, and this type of inhumanity must be put to a stop.