Directed by: David Fincher
Starring: Daniel Craig, Rooney Mara, Christopher Plummer
Rated: R
158 minutes

Rooney Mara stars as the enigmatic Lisbeth Salander in "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo." (Courtesy photo)

As 2011 comes to a close and I still haven't seen the big-name top-of-the-heap movies like "Hugo" and "The Descendants" and "War Horse," I've realized that the movies that I have seen—"lesser" movies like "Shame" and "Young Adult" and now "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo"—are still pretty good, maybe even great. That says something; 2011 was a great year for movies, all things considered.

For me, at least, David Fincher's new thriller brings the year to an exciting end.

Stieg Larsson's series of thrillers was adapted to the screen in Sweden a couple of years ago, and it didn't take the USA long to respond. Daniel Craig ("Cowboys and Aliens") stars as Mikael Blomkvist, a high-profile Stockholm journalist who has just suffered a devastating loss in a libel case. Ready to give up on his career, he is suddenly summoned to a small island in northern Sweden by a mysterious elderly businessman, Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer, "The Last Station"). Vanger has had his eye on Blomkvist and thinks he'll be able to help with a certain family mystery: specifically, finding out who murdered Henrik's niece back in 1965.

Bewildered and unsure what he'll find, Blomkvist begins looking into the family's history. On his own, all he can really find out is that the members of the family just don't like each other very much. The more he inquires, the more he finds they don't like him, either. He decides after a while that he'd like a research assistant. Enter Lisbeth Salander.

Lisbeth (Rooney Mara, "The Social Network") is not your average investigator. With countless piercings, a violent temper, and an attitude with little room for compromise, she makes a bad impression and doesn't care. But she's brilliant, and she and Blomkvist make a surprisingly efficient team. And when the case turns dangerous, she turns out to be more valuable than Blomkvist would ever have expected.

Daniel Craig is journalist Mikael Blomkvist in "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo." (Courtesy photo)

This is a big movie in every sense: big action, big performances, a big plotline, big suspense. David Fincher ("The Social Network") hits all the right notes: It's dark, it's fast, and it's powerful. And yet, I'm not entirely sold.

For starters, while Steven Zaillian's ("Moneyball") script is exciting and smart, the pacing of the story isn't quite right. If you don't already know the book or the original movie, this one will leave your head spinning.

The ending is a little off, too, as though David Fincher weren't quite sure how to let the story end. I've had the same problem with his other movies, like "Fight Club" and "The Social Network." For some reason, they have strange endings that just fizzle out instead of closing up. But for all the confusion or dissatisfaction that "Dragon Tattoo" has in its opening half hour and last ten minutes, the middle two hours are pure entertainment.

This is thanks to the great casting and huge talent of the cast. Rooney Mara sinks her teeth into the role of Lisbeth, and it helps that Zaillian (and Larsson) wrote the part with equal parts admiration, fear, and adrenaline. It's the sort of role actors can only dream of getting, and Mara isn't one to waste the chance. This is as good a performance as I've seen in the 2011 field, comparable to Natalie Portman in "Black Swan," but feistier and arguably more commanding.

Craig, meanwhile, provides an agreeable lead. He has learned to stop pouting so much, and his acting is much better for it. Perhaps more impressively, he makes us forget that he's James Bond; in toning down the action star in him, he makes himself a more believable lead. Good supporting performances from Plummer, as well as Stellan Skarsgård ("Good Will Hunting") and Robin Wright ("The Princess Bride"), round out the nearly perfect cast.

Of course, I have to make the inevitable comparison: Fincher's "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" vs. the Swedish original. And for me, the original wins, because it manages the suspense and the pacing better than the new version. That being said, they're both very good movies, and a welcome respite from the overblown explosion movies that many thrillers have become. If exciting movies are your cup of tea, you owe it to yourself to see this. Just remember to bring a coat. It gets nippy in Sweden this time of year.

Danny Eisenberg is a 2010 graduate of the Bromfield School and is currently a student at the University of Pennsylvania.