I will have a bias off the bat going into this critique. So let me address those points first before I start talking about the film.
Firstly, Daniel Craig, in my opinion, is one of cinema’s most magnetic lead actors in the business today. Starting with Yellow Cake, Casion Royale, and Quantum of Solace along with his supporting in Munich and the Jacket, made me sold on him.
I just wish he would avoid shit scripts like the Invasion or *sigh Cowboys and Aliens. What the fuck were you thinking Daniel? I know 3 million dollars is a lot, but good God, would you suck a herpes infected dick for 3 million because that’s what you did when you decided to do Cowboys and Aliens. You sucked a herpes ridden inflamed cock. But I digress, I think he’s a charismatic yet stoic force on screen and with a solid script he’s unbeatable. Most people don’t realize how many actors he beat out for the role of Mikael Blomqvist, one of which was George Clooney.
(Side note, fuck you George Clooney.)
My second bias is with the director. David Fincher, director of my favorite film of all time Fight Club, is a master craftsman and auteur. His sickly tinted cinematography and grotesque subject matter makes him like heroin. If you doubt his commitment to films about the physically twisted and personally antisocial, watch Alien, Fight Club, Seven, the Game, Social Network, and the Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Only a director so intimately familiar with sociopaths and monsters could make a film about Mark Zuckerberg.
So when you combine one the best directors with one of the best actors with an already established fucked up book to base the movie on, you go into the movie with a bias, expecting the best. And guess what? I got the best.
This movie was insane, with mentionable performances by Stellan Skarsgard (The Hunt for Red October and father of ERIC NORTHMAN from true blood) and up and coming billionaire rich bitch turned Hollywood Rooney Mara. And how can I forget Christopher Plummer as Henrik? I know Max Von Sydow will go to his grave steaming he was passed over for the role but that’s a whole other discussion.
Now the movie, I think I can just sum up how much I loved it by talking about one of the last scenes when Daniel Craig is chained up from the ceiling in Stellan’s basement with Enya playing in the background.
That room was fucking ridiculous. A friend of mine was laughing so hard as was I but I didn’t realize why until we talked about it after. The basement firstly was covered in mortuary tiles with a sound proofed ceiling. It also had a huge variety of “garden tools” on the walls and a human sized cage on the floor. And the “sprinkler system” shot out chloroform gas to stun his victims.
You mean to tell me no one raised an eyebrow or two when he had that place fucking built? Did he ask the contractor, “Yea so I need the sprinklers to shoot out gas. Also do you know where I can get gas to put a whole room of people to sleep?”
Now the reason my friend was rioting in laughter was over the giant garden hose Stellan has installed in that basement for “clean up”. How?! Did you pay someone to put that there without arousing suspicion? Leave it to Fincher to come up with the best serial killer layer I’ve ever seen.


